English LCCC Newsbulletin For
Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 18/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
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Bible Quotations For today
They went
out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they
would have remained with us
First Letter of John 02/12-20/:”I
am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven on account of
his name. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the
beginning. I am writing to you, young people, because you have conquered the
evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you,
fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young
people, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you,and you have
overcome the evil one. Do not love the world or the things in the world. The
love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the
world the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches comes
not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing
away, but those who do the will of God live for ever. Children, it is the last
hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have
come. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but
they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have
remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs
to us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and all of you have
knowledge.”
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials
published on August 17-18/2021
Camouflaged & Futile Petitions as long as Hezbollah & its occupation are
not their core & essence/Elias Bejjani/August 18/2021
Le chantage du siécle.Jean-Marie Kassab/August 17/2021
Ministry of Health: 1178 new coronavirus cases, 6 deaths
Israel Army Tests Its Forces Readiness on Lebanese Border
Explosion in Beirut electricity grid, authorities call for
evacuation of nearby homes
Aoun meets Serbia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, stresses keenness on bolstering
bilateral relations
Reports: Agreements Reached on Some Ministerial Portfolios
Reports: Govt. Hurdles Persist as U.S. Pushes for Formation
Parliament General Secretariat receives Aoun’s letter on subsidies' issue
Berri summons Parliament to read Aoun's letter on Friday
Mikati after meeting with Aoun at Baabda palace: We are working hard to
eliminate all obstacles
Mikati confirms Hariri, Siniora, Salam’s support, strength of relationship
North Lebanon Hospitals Grapple with Power, Telecom Outages
Agreement Reached on Keeping Fuel Subsidies until Ration Card Approval
U.N. Official Urges Fuel and Electricity Supply to Avoid 'Catastrophe' in
Lebanon
BDL Reportedly Rejects to Finance Gasoline Shipment
Akar receives batch of medical aid from Serbian counterpart
MSF Supports Hospitals to Treat Wounded from Akkar Blast
Minister Hassan briefed on drug card project to ensure that support fairly
reaches patients
Five detainees released by information branch
Army Seizes 113,000 Liters of Fuel in Zouk Mosbeh
Diab meets ICRC Lebanon delegation head, Serbia’s Foreign Affairs Minister
UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon on fuel crisis in Lebanon: Fuel
shortages threaten provision of essential health, water services across Lebanon
Momentum gathers on new cabinet as crisis bites deeper in Lebanon
Cleansing the Lebanese monetary system/Chibli Mallat/August 17/2021
Titles For The Latest English LCCC
Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 17-18/20211
Explosions heard in Quneitra province
in southwestern Syria
Former US President Bush expresses ‘deep sadness’ over Afghan situation
Macron Says Afghanistan Must Not Again be 'Sanctuary of Terrorism'
US intelligence warned over the summer of Afghan military
collapse: Report
Taliban takeover leaves Iran and Turkey fearing refugee influx
Two Armenian Soldiers Killed In Clashes With Azerbaijan
Turkey drops Kabul airport plans, offers Taliban ‘technical support’
Saudi Arabia takes cautious approach towards Taliban takeover
Pro-Iran militia muddles Iraq-Syria ties, sparks doubts about conference
Saied vows no ‘turning back’ as Ennahda escalates rhetoric
New wave of resignations threatens unity of Morocco’s PJD
Poland Keeps Ambassador at Home amid Dispute with Israel
Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC
English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on
August 17-18/20211
Controversial German politician to head UN agency accused of helping Iran
with tech linked to nuclear program/Benjamin Weinthal and Ben Evansky/Fox
News/August 17/2021
The West has lost its virtue/We have abandoned the taboos that held us
together/Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist and essayist./UnHerd/August 17/2021
From Idlib to Gaza: Where is Taliban victory celebrated? - analysis/Seth J.
Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/August 17/2021
Muslim Perseverance vs Western Myopia: The Real Lesson of Afghanistan/Raymond
Ibrahim/August 17/2021
The US Withdrawal from Afghanistan, Equivocations and Prospects/Charles Elias
Chartouni/August 17/2021
From Biden to the Taliban with Love/Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/August
17/2021
The Latest English LCCC Lebanese &
Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 17-18/2021
نطالب بعدم توقيع
أي استرحام مهما كان هدفه أو محتواه ما لم يكن التركيز الأول والأخير فيه على
احتلال حزب الله والقرارات الدولية الخاصة بلبنان
Camouflaged & Futile Petitions as
long as Hezbollah & its occupation are not their core & essence
Elias Bejjani/August 18/2021
All those Non Profit Organizations (NGO'S) inside occupied Lebanon, or in the
Diaspora, who are almost every week initiating and circulating petitions on
Change.org, and calling Lebanese citizens to sign them, are actually and in
reality not helping the Lebanese cause or the occupied Lebanon, even if their
intentions are good and not evil. It is worth mentioning the Good intentions
only do not Liberate Lebanon, as well as only food, medicine and all other
humanitarian needs and supplies.
Why they are not helping by such futile and useless petitions, and most portably
are harming, is because they are not focusing on the main cancer that is
devouring Lebanon and its people, which is Hezbollah occupation .
All these petitions are not mentioning the occupier Hezbollah, and are not
calling for the liberation of Lebanon from its occupation. They are only calling
for food, electricity, medicines and other humanitarian domains..
This suspicious track of the NGO'S camouflaging petitions serves the Hezbollah
occupation, and totally diverts the focus from its cancerous and devastating
occupation.
Therefore, openly and loudly, we call on our Lebanese people, in both occupied
Lebanon and Diaspora, not to sign any petition that does not focus first and
foremost on the occupation of Hezbollah, and on the UN Resolutions the Armistice
accord with Israel, 1559, 1701, and 1680.
Le chantage du siécle.
Jean-Marie Kassab/August 17/2021
Des cadavres calcinés, des mères éplorées, des files interminables de citoyens
affamés de tout et qui vendraient leurs âmes pour assurer les besoins de leur
familles. Un ramassis de gangsters , de profiteurs de temps de guerre aux
canines acérées. L'internet ,devenu le nerf du monde, gravement menacé, des
pharmacies aux etagères poussièreuses, des hôpitaux hantés par des médecins aux
yeux hagards et au chevet de malades au sort incertain.
Tel est le Liban d'aujourdhui.
L'objectif de l'occupant est quasi réalisé : mettre le pays à genoux afin de le
contrôler totalement et pour toujours. Le glaive Iranien est fermement placé sur
notre jugulaire. "Cédez semble dire le mollah local ou j' enfonce ma lame."
Et tout le monde a cédé et le chantage a réussi.
Tout en sachant bien que ce gouvernement qui pourrait être formé sera incapable
de changer la donne, l' ambassadrice américaine supplia Aoun et Mikati de former
un gouvernement juste pour eviter le désastre. Paris fît de même pour contrer l'
halali.
De grâce, dirent les deux puissances aux agents iraniens en place, faites
quelque chose pour enrayer la catastrophe.
Et le chantage a réussi car nous sommes à genoux. Car il semble que nous sommes
à bout. Car il semble que l'epée iranienne menace les couilles du peuple pour
une castration définitive.
Mais si Shea voyait ailleurs . Et si Paris farfouillait plus loin. Et s'ils
arrêtaient de visiter Ali Baba, et dialogueraient et aideraient les possesseurs
de couilles , les vrais Libanais , peut-être que l'espoir renaîtrait.
Et si ces braves et courageux hommes et femmes diraient merde à tous et
prendraient le pouvoir tous seuls, de force s'il le faut.
Pas mal comme idée, vrai?
David tua Goliath d'un caillou.
Le Liban a tles rues de Baabda ou celles qui mènent au Serail ou Ain Tiné.
David n' a pas dit son dernier mot, il fait tourner sa fronde..
Ministry of Health: 1178 new coronavirus cases, 6 deaths
NNA/August 17/2021
The Ministry of Public Health announced 1178 new cases of coronavirus, raising
the cumulative number of confirmed cases to 584,896. Six deaths have been
recorded.
Israel Army Tests Its Forces Readiness on Lebanese
Border
Naharnet/August 17/2021
The Israeli army said on Tuesday that its Galilee Division has started “this
morning” a planned military exercise to test its forces' readiness “in the event
of a sudden incident on Lebanon's border.”"The exercise comes within the
framework of military readiness tests that were planned for the 2021 annual
training plan," according to a tweet published by Israeli army Arabic-language
spokesman Avichay Adraee. Adraee also said that the
Israeli security forces and military vehicles will be moving actively in
Israel's northern region.
Explosion in Beirut electricity grid, authorities call
for evacuation of nearby homes
Ismaeel Naar and Rawad Taha, Al Arabiya English/17 August ,2021
An explosion has erupted in the main transformer of Beirut’s electricity grid,
according to several reports, with authorities calling for the evacuation of
nearby homes in fear of another explosion due to the presence of large fuel and
diesel storages.The incident took place in Beirut's Tariq al-Jadida neighborhood
area, with plumes of smoke rising in the air, according to one video being
shared online. The latest incident comes just several days after at least 20
people were killed and 79 others injured after a gas tanker exploded in the
Tleil area of Lebanon’s Akkar region, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.The
two explosions come as Lebanon faces a severe fuel shortage that has been blamed
on smuggling, hoarding and the cash-strapped government’s inability to secure
deliveries of imported fuel.
Aoun meets Serbia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, stresses
keenness on bolstering bilateral relations
NNA/August 17/2021
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, on Tuesday welcomed at the
Baabda palace, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, Nikola
Selakovic. President Aoun underlined Lebanon’s keenness on bolstering the
bilateral relations between the two countries in the various fields. The
President stressed that Lebanon always calls for achieving peace among countries
and peoples, briefing the Serbian minister on the conditions Lebanon is going
through amid the accumulated crises that pose great challenges on all economic,
social and humanitarian levels. As President Aoun
called on the international community to help Lebanon in addressing these
crises, he thanked Serbia for the assistance it provided during the recent
period, especially after the Beirut Port explosion, asking the guest Minister to
convey his greetings and thanks to the Serbian President, Alexander Vucic. The
visiting Minister said that the Serbian people stand by the Lebanese in the
difficult circumstances they are going through, conveying to President Aoun the
greetings of the Serbian President. The Serbian
Minister extended an invitation to President Aoun to visit Serbia and
participate in the celebrations that will take place on the occasion of the
establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Reports: Agreements Reached on Some Ministerial
Portfolios
Naharnet/August 17/2021
The meeting between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Najib
Miqati resulted in placing two lists of names for the new government portfolios,
according to informed sources. The sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper in
remarks published Tuesday that “the names that have been circulating for some
portfolios, especially for the ministries of interior and defense, are not
accurate.”They added that a name that “was not mentioned in ex-PM Saad Hariri’s
lineup nor in Miqati's line-up,” was suggested for either the Interior or the
Defense portfolio. “Solutions were reached concerning
some of the portfolios that had caused disagreements in the previous meetings,”
the report said. According to the sources, “the Progressive Socialist Party will
have the Education portfolio instead of the Social Affairs portfolio that was
given to the president,”and “Hizbullah will have the Public Works portfolio
instead of the Health portfolio that was given to Miqati.”
The sources stated that “the telecommunications portfolio was proposed to
the Marada movement who hasn’t given an answer yet.”“The Energy portfolio was
largely avoided (by all parties) after being ditched by the Free Patriotic
Movement,” and “the name of the Minister of Finance has not been decided yet,
amid (Speaker Nabih) Berri’s insistence on Youssef Khalil’s name for the
portfolio,” the sources also said. Another meeting
will be held in the next 24 hours between Aoun and Miqati, according to the
report.
Reports: Govt. Hurdles Persist as U.S. Pushes for
Formation
Naharnet/August 17/2021
The talk of positiveness in the cabinet formation process over the past hours
has turned out to be “fabricated” and “not based on anything tangible,” a media
report said on Tuesday. “The obstacles are still the same and the PM-designate
submitted to the President a complete line-up that included a distribution of
portfolios to sects and confessions in addition to the names of some candidates,
but the disagreements over shares continued, especially that (President Michel)
Aoun rejected certain ministerial allotments,” informed sources told the Nidaa
al-Watan newspaper.
“The President proposed a Aounist candidate for the justice portfolio but he was
rejected by Miqati. He also suggested giving the environment portfolio to the
Progressive Socialist Party instead of social affairs,” the sources added,
noting that what Aoun proposed “disturbed everything that the PM-designate had
pledged to the blocs that named him.”“The interior portfolio hurdles has also
not been resolved in terms of selecting the candidate for the post, in addition
to the dispute over the finance portfolio, with Aoun rejecting the nomination of
Youssef Khalil for it,” the sources went on to say, noting that “the
distribution of some service-related portfolios has also not been
finalized.”Highly informed sources meanwhile told the daily that “the foreign
pressures pushing for government formation have become very huge.”Monday’s visit
to the presidential palace by U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea was “a
step in that direction,” the sources said. “The same message was also carried to
Beirut on Thursday by CIA chief William Burns, who met with the chiefs of
security agencies and stressed the need to prevent a collapse of the security
situation in Lebanon,” the sources added.
Parliament General Secretariat receives Aoun’s letter on subsidies' issue
NNA/August 17/2021
The House Secretariat on Tuesday received the letter addressed by President of
the Republic, General Michel Aoun, to the Parliament, through House Speaker
Nabih Berri, over the issue of stopping subsidies on daily living and vital
materials and commodities in light of the decision taken by Central Bank
Governor Riad Salameh, to lift subsidy on fuel, without waiting for the ration
card to be issued, and the resulting negative repercussions that exacerbated the
economic, financial, social and livelihood crisis in the country. In his letter,
President Aoun explained the course of the meetings held with the concerned
ministers and the Banque du Liban Governor, and those that were held in the
Grand Serail, which did not lead to practical results leading to a gradual
lifting of subsidies for oil derivatives, medicines, and hospital and medical
supplies of all kinds, which are no longer available, thus threatening people's
health, food, social security, as well as their daily living rights.
The Council of Ministers was also unable to convene, after its Prime
Minister refused to call for a meeting, the letter added. Accordingly, the
President asked the House Speaker to discuss this letter in Parliament in
accordance with regulations, and to adopt the appropriate position, procedure or
decision in this regards.
Berri summons Parliament to read Aoun's letter on Friday
NNA/August 17/2021
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Tuesday summoned the House of Parliament to a
session next Friday at 2:00 p.m., at the Unesco Palace, in order to read
President of the Republic, Michel Aoun’s letter and take the necessary measures
in this regard.
Mikati after meeting with Aoun at Baabda palace: We are
working hard to eliminate all obstacles
NNA/August 17/2021
Prime Minister-designate, Najib Mikati, said in the wake of his meeting with
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, at the Baabda palace that “We
did not touch on the government program file,” adding that they are in the final
stages of forming the government. “We are working hard to eliminate all
obstacles,” Mikati underlined.
Mikati confirms Hariri, Siniora, Salam’s support, strength
of relationship
NNA/August 17/2021
The press office of Prime Minister- designate, Najib Mikati, on Tuesday called
on the media to focus on positive developments in order to make the cabinet
formation process successful. “Some published texts are mere parts of analysis
and lack precision, or maybe include leaks with objectives,” the PM’s press
office said in a statement, which also confirmed the firmness of his
relationship with former Prime Ministers, Hariri, Siniora, and Salam, as well as
their support in forming a government based on constitutional requirements.
North Lebanon Hospitals Grapple with Power, Telecom
Outages
Agence France Presse/August 17/2021
Hospitals struggled Tuesday to operate amid life-threatening power cuts and
telecom outages in the north Lebanon region of Akkar where a fuel tank explosion
killed at least 28 people this week. Lights and phone lines went out across the
impoverished and marginalized region that has long suffered from an ailing power
grid but that is now grappling with an unprecedented crisis amid severe diesel
shortages. The outages come less than two days after a
fuel tank exploded in the village of Al-Tleil, scorching people clamoring to
fill petrol that the army was distributing.
Around 80 people, including several soldiers, were injured, many of them with
severe burns, which overwhelmed hospitals. Fuel shortages since the start of
summer have aggravated hardship in Lebanon, a country of more than six million
that is in the throes of an economic crisis branded by the World Bank as one of
the worst since the mid-19th century. Without the diesel fuel needed to power
private generators, businesses, hospitals and even the country's main telecom
operator have been forced to scale back operations or close entirely in light of
outages lasting up to 22 hours a day.
In Akkar, hospitals still storing corpses of victims charred in Sunday's fuel
tank blast were left without power, internet, and working landlines, as health
officials pleaded for help from the authorities. "We have a stock of 700 liters
(almost 185 gallons) of diesel fuel which will last for only one day," said Riad
Rahal, the director of Rahal Hospital in the Akkar town of Halba. The nearby El-Youssef
hospital also had enough stock of diesel to last until Wednesday morning and no
working phone lines, said Nathaline El-Chaar, assistant to the director. "Since
yesterday landlines have been out of service... and we are trying hard to secure
diesel," she told AFP. She said the hospital's diesel
provider had delayed deliveries fearing attacks on a north Lebanon highway where
incidents in recent days have seen angry groups seize fuel from trucks. The
official National News Agency on Tuesday said diesel fuel shortages and power
outages at the Ogero telecom provider forced it to cut internet, landlines and
mobile phone services in several parts of Akkar, effectively paralyzing banks,
businesses, and state offices. Ogero head Imad Kreidieh warned other regions in
Lebanon would follow suit if the situation does not improve.
Agreement Reached on Keeping Fuel Subsidies until Ration Card Approval
Naharnet/August 17/2021
The Public Works Parliamentary Committee, the caretaker ministers of energy and
finance, Electricite du Liban, the private oil companies and the state-run oil
facilities held a meeting Tuesday in the presence of a central bank
representative, al-Jadeed TV said. The meeting was dedicated to studying the
fuel subsidization file and it was decided to take the following steps:
- Maintaining subsidization until the ration card is approved
- Asking President Michel Aoun and caretaker PM Hassan Diab to finalize the
ration card plan within a week prior to lifting subsidization
- Tasking the army with protecting electricity transfer stations as soon as
possible to avoid a power outage across Lebanon
- A gradual increase of fuel prices after the distribution of ration cards
U.N. Official Urges Fuel and Electricity Supply to Avoid
'Catastrophe' in Lebanon
Naharnet/August 17/2021
Fuel shortages threaten the provision of essential health and water services
across Lebanon, putting thousands of families in Lebanon at risk of a
“humanitarian catastrophe,” U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon Najat
Rochdi warned on Tuesday. “I am deeply concerned about the impact of the fuel
crisis on access to health care and water supply for millions of people in
Lebanon,” Rochdi said. “A bad situation only stands to
get worse unless an instant solution is found,” she cautioned.
The largest hospitals in Lebanon have already reduced their activities due to
fuel and electricity shortages. Meanwhile, public
water supply and wastewater treatment systems that are heavily reliant on fuel,
have drastically reduced operations all over Lebanon, leaving millions of people
without access to public water and jeopardizing the environmental and public
health. “As a result of the deteriorating socio-economic situation in the
country, the health system is facing significant threats of limited liquidity,
medication shortages and emigration of medical staff. Hundreds of health care
workers have left the country while essential medications, such as chronic
diseases treatments and antibiotics, are unavailable,” Rochdi explained.
“With Lebanon facing another wave of COVID-19 cases, the current fuel
crisis has the potential to worsen the health situation. Continued shortages may
compromise the delivery of lifesaving treatments. Reports suggest that Intensive
Care Unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 are already a quarter full, with most patients
relying on ventilators. An interruption of electricity would hence jeopardize
their eventual recovery,” the U.N. official went on to say. Meanwhile, Beirut
and Mount Lebanon water authorities suffered a weeklong shutdown due to power
cuts while their counterparts in the North and the South faced depleted fuel
stocks and growing social tensions and insecurity. “Electricité du Liban (EDL)
has halted main power service lines to Water Establishments which affect the
lives of approximately 4 million people in the country. In parallel, water
authorities are confronted with limited availability and affordability of water
supply consumables such as chlorine and spare parts for pumping stations.
Overall, water shortages raise the risk of increased infection rates and disease
outbreaks. Livelihoods, agricultural damage and food insecurity may also follow
unless a solution is found,” Rochdi warned. She added that prioritizing restored
power supply from EDL is “critical to maintain lifeline services for the people,
such as health and water systems.” “Fuel shortages will further disrupt the
delivery of any humanitarian assistance,” Rochdi warned, cautioning that “the
risks are simply too great.” “All stakeholders must
work together to find a sustainable and equitable solution that serves the needs
of all and protects the health and safety of communities,” she added.
Rochdi also noted that humanitarian partners, including U.N. agencies, stand
ready to “provide assistance to affected populations across Lebanon.”
BDL Reportedly Rejects to Finance Gasoline Shipment
Naharnet/August 17/2021
The central bank has agreed to open lines of credit for bringing two diesel
shipments into the country, al-Jadeed TV said on Tuesday. The two shipments will
be subsidized at a rate of LBP 3,900 for the dollar and have been imported by
the Liquigas and Uniterminals companies, al-Jadeed added. The shipments,
containing 80 million liters of diesel, can meet the market’s needs for five to
six days, the TV network said. The central bank
meanwhile refused to open a line of credit for a 40-million-liter gasoline
shipment needed by the market, al-Jadeed added.
Akar receives batch of medical aid from Serbian counterpart
NNA/August 17/2021
Deputy Prime Minister, caretaker Minister of National Defense and Acting
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Zeina Akar, welcomed at Rafic Hariri International
Airport the Serbian Foreign Minister, Nikola Selakovic, who handed her a batch
of Serbian medical aid, consisting of 40000 Sputnik vaccines gifted to the
military institution.Akar and Selakovic held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
bilateral talks that touched on bilateral relations and ways to bolster them.
They also discussed the latest developments in Lebanon and the region, the aid
provided by Serbia to Lebanon, the means to advance partnership and cooperation,
and Serbia's experience in recovering from an economic crisis similar to the one
Lebanon is undergoing. The Serbian Minister handed
Akar an invitation to the 60th celebration of the founding of the "Non-Aligned
Movement" and the upcoming summit to celebrate it. He also affirmed "his
country's solidarity with Lebanon, (…) and Serbia's readiness to provide aid."
On a different note, the minister met with Head of the International Committee
of the Red Cross, Simone Aeschlimann, on a protocol visit.
MSF Supports Hospitals to Treat Wounded from Akkar Blast
Naharnet/August 17/2021
Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has provided medical
supplies and human resources to hospitals in Lebanon who are admitting wounded
patients from the horrific fuel tank explosion in the northern region of Akkar.
“The health system in Lebanon is responding to this latest tragic development
under extremely challenging conditions,” said Joao Martins, MSF’s Head of
Mission in Lebanon. “There are critical shortages in medicine, supplies and
medical personnel as well as electricity and fuel ruptures that are impacting
the operations of medical facilities and quality of care. The supplies and staff
provided by MSF are assisting the hospitals in providing the required treatments
for those injured,” he added. MSF provided medicines, medical supplies and
medical staff to the Al Salam Hospital in Tripoli North Lebanon; Notre Dame De
La Paix Hospital in Qobayat; and Geitaoui Hospital in Beirut, with a focus on
material needed for surgery and the treatment of severe burns, a statement said.
“Despite the immediate support provided, assistance for long term treatment is
expected to be needed for some of the patients. MSF remains ready to respond if
needed,” added Martins.
Minister Hassan briefed on drug card project to ensure that
support fairly reaches patients
NNA/August 17/2021
Caretaker Minister of Public Health, Hamad Hassan, chaired a meeting for
representatives of the International Pharma Group, in which he was briefed on
the health drug card project, which the Group expressed its willingness to
finance, in light of Minister Hassan's keenness to launch the card as soon as
possible, to guarantee drug tracking and prevent smuggling, monopolization, or
storing, knowing that under the project, every Lebanese citizen will receive a
free health drug card. Minister Hassan stressed that
this card falls within the framework of drug tracking, to ensure that medicines
subsidized by the Central Bank fairly reaches all patients.
"We have turned the challenge into an opportunity to achieve a strategic
goal. The drug card will be launched in a first stage, and then developed into a
unified health card," he said.
Five detainees released by information branch
NNA/August 17/2021
The National News Agency correspondent reported that 5 detainees have been so
far released by the Information Branch amid chants in support of them, while the
sit-in continues until the release of the rest of the detainees, led by William
Noun.
Army Seizes 113,000 Liters of Fuel in Zouk Mosbeh
Naharnet/August 17/2021t
The army on Tuesday announced seizing 113,000 liters of hoarded fuel in the
Keserwan area of Zouk Mosbeh. In a tweet, the army said its troops raided a
warehouse in Zouk Mosbeh’s industrial zone where they confiscated 65,000 liters
of diesel and 48,000 liters of gasoline. The seized quantities were distributed
to hospitals and bakeries in the region, the military added. The army has
intensified its raids on fuel hoarders in recent days amid a severe diesel and
gasoline shortage crisis in the country.
Diab meets ICRC Lebanon delegation head, Serbia’s Foreign
Affairs Minister
NNA/August 17/2021
Caretaker Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, in the morning received at the Grand
Serail, ICRC Head of Delegation in Lebanon, Simone Casabianca Aeschimann, who
came on on a protocol visit on the occasion of assuming her duties in Lebanon,
accompanied by Deputy Head of Mission, Basma Tabaja, in the presence of Prime
Minister’s advisor for diplomatic affairs, Ambassador Gebran Soufan.
The meeting broached Lebanon's medical and health needs amidst the
difficult circumstances Lebanon is going through.
Premier Diab also welcomed the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of
Serbia, Nikola Selakovic, heading a delegation which included Serbian Ambassador
to Lebanon, Emir Elfic, Serbian Ambassador to Cyprus, Marko Blagojevic,
Secretary-General of the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Slavica Jelaca,
Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs’s Counselor, Dejan Erakovic, and Honorary
Consul of the Republic of Serbia in Lebanon, Youssef Martinos, in the presence
of Ambassador Soufan and PM Advisor for health affairs, Dr. Petra Khoury.
Selakovic expressed his solidarity with Lebanon in light of the current
conditions, and announced that his government will provide Lebanon with forty
thousand doses of the Sputnik vaccine, and will also send 45 tons of food to the
country during September. He also expressed his government's readiness to
provide technical assistance for the development of the vaccination platform in
Lebanon.-- Caretaker PM Press Office
UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon on fuel crisis in
Lebanon: Fuel shortages threaten provision of essential health, water services
across Lebanon
NNA/August 17/2021
Fuel shortages threaten the provision of essential health and water services
across Lebanon, putting thousands of families in Lebanon at risk of a
humanitarian catastrophe. “I am deeply concerned about the impact of the fuel
crisis on access to health care and water supply for millions of people in
Lebanon,” said Ms. Najat Rochdi, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for
Lebanon. “A bad situation only stands to get worse unless an instant solution is
found.” The largest hospitals in Lebanon have already reduced their activities
due to fuel and electricity shortages. Meanwhile, public water supply and
wastewater treatment systems that are heavily reliant on fuel, have drastically
reduced operations all over Lebanon, leaving millions of people without access
to public water and jeopardizing the environmental and public health.
As a result of the deteriorating socio-economic situation in the country,
the health system is facing significant threats of limited liquidity, medication
shortages and emigration of medical staff. Hundreds of health care workers have
left the country while essential medications, such as chronic diseases
treatments and antibiotics, are unavailable. With Lebanon facing another wave of
COVID-19 cases, the current fuel crisis has the potential to worsen the health
situation. Continued shortages may compromise the delivery of lifesaving
treatments. Reports suggest that Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 are
already a quarter full, with most patients relying on ventilators. An
interruption of electricity would hence jeopardize their eventual recovery.
Meanwhile, Beirut and Mount Lebanon water authorities suffered a weeklong
shutdown due to power cuts while their counterparts in the North and the South
faced depleted fuel stocks and growing social tensions and insecurity.
Electricité du Liban (EDL) has halted main power service lines to Water
Establishments which affect the lives of approximately 4 million people in the
country. In parallel, water authorities are confronted with limited availability
and affordability of water supply consumables such as chlorine and spare parts
for pumping stations. Overall, water shortages raise the risk of increased
infection rates and disease outbreaks. Livelihoods, agricultural damage and food
insecurity may also follow unless a solution is found.
Prioritizing restored power supply from EDL is critical to maintain lifeline
services for the people, such as health and water systems. Fuel shortages will
further disrupt the delivery of any humanitarian assistance. “The risks are
simply too great,” warned Ms. Rochdi. “All stakeholders must work together to
find a sustainable and equitable solution that serves the needs of all and
protects the health and safety of communities,” she added. Ms. Rochdi also notes
that humanitarian partners, including UN agencies, stand ready to provide
assistance to affected populations across Lebanon.—UNIC
Momentum gathers on new cabinet as crisis bites deeper
in Lebanon
The Arab Weekly/August 17/2021
BEIRUT--Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun said he hoped a new Lebanese government
would be formed within the next couple days, as efforts to agree one were
spurred on by a fuel crisis that has brought much of the country to a standstill
and sparked warnings of anarchy. After meeting Aoun, Prime Minister-designate
Najib Mikati said it was still possible for a government to be formed in the
next two days. The issues were being tackled one-by-one, he said, though he did
not know how the last would be resolved. Ahead of his meeting with Mikati, Aoun
indicated a deal was close, saying “we are about to form a government”,
specifying later it would be “within a couple days, God willing”. A senior
political source said the government talks were evolving positively although
some issues remained to be tackled, mainly the names of ministers. Explaining
the impetus, the source added, “The whole situation is deteriorating, the whole
system is collapsing.”Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the heavily armed,
Iran-backed Shia group Hezbollah, on Sunday urged the government to be formed in
two or three days, saying this was the only way to prevent anarchy which had
already begun. He also said Hezbollah would begin bringing diesel and gasoline
from Iran with delivery dates to be announced soon. US Ambassador Dorothy Shea
said the economy and basic services had “reached the precipice of collapse”.
“Every day that goes by without an empowered government committed to and able to
implement urgently-needed reforms is a day in which the already dire situation
slides further into humanitarian catastrophe,” she said. A steadily-worsening
fuel crisis has marked a crunch point in Lebanon’s two-year-long financial
meltdown, with shortages of imported fuel forcing hospitals, bakeries and
businesses to scale back or shut down in the last week or so.At least 28 people
were killed when the petrol tank, surrounded by residents clamouring to fill
their vehicles amid crippling shortages, blew up early Sunday in the northern
region of Akkar.
Akkar explosion
Lebanon reeled Monday from that deadly explosion which burned alive people
desperate to fill plastic containers. Lebanon’s latest tragedy comes as it
grapples with an economic crisis described by the World Bank as one of the
world’s worst since the 1850s. Nearly 80 people were injured in the blast,
medics said, many with burns that further overwhelmed hospitals struggling to
function without electricity. On Monday, foreign countries and UN agencies were
scrambling emergency aid to help exhausted health workers cope with the new
influx of serious injuries and run DNA tests to identify charred remains. A
health ministry official said that authorities were still trying to determine a
final death count. Shortages of key commodities have accelerated in recent days,
leaving much of Lebanon struggling to source fuel, gas and even bread, with
buying power pummelled by the currency losing more than 90 percent of its value
on the black market.Some of the country’s six million inhabitants now fear the
internet and drinking water will be next to disappear. The blast in Akkar, one
of the poorest parts of the country, was another landmark in Lebanon’s descent
from a regional beacon of modernity into state collapse. The scenes of horror
piled trauma on a country still coming to terms with last year’s cataclysmic
Beirut port explosion that killed more than 200 people and disfigured the city.
Frustration with the ruling class
In Tripoli’s al-Salam hospital, which received the bulk of patients burned by
the Akkar blast, 23-year-old Iqaz Saqr wept. Her husband and a brother, a
20-year-old livestock farmer named Abdul Rahman, were both caught in the
explosion. Abdul Rahman was battling for his life. “My brother was out of
gasoline. He just needed a small amount so he could go and get boxes of feed for
his sheep,” Iqaz told AFP. “My husband too just wanted
gasoline so he could … provide for me and our daughter.” Across Lebanon, with no
more than two hours a day of mains electricity supply, many shops and
restaurants remain closed, unable to source fuel for their generators. Many
private and public sector employees have been told to stay home and most of the
rest have often been doing the same for lack of transport options.
Stuck in an endless queue of cars at a Beirut petrol station, Mohammed,
who did not want to give his full name, said he could see no light at the end of
the tunnel. “We need to leave Lebanon. We all need to
get out,” said the 30-year-old engineer. “God help those who stay.” The state
declared a national day of mourning over the Akkar blast, a move unlikely to
offer much solace to a population that blamed those very authorities for the
tragedy.
Crisis biting deeper
Angry protesters on Sunday torched the home of the landowner on whose plot the
tragedy unfolded, accusing him of involvement in a hoarding and smuggling scheme
allegedly covered up by top officials. Petrol station owners have been accused
of hoarding fuel ahead of an expected price hike, causing crippling shortages
and spawning a ruthless black market that is enriching a small cartel and
choking the rest of the country. On Monday, the army said it had seized several
hundred tonnes of fuel across the country for redistribution to neighbourhood
generators, hospitals and bakeries. A few dozen people protested on Sunday in
front of the Beirut home of the recently-appointed prime minister-designate
Mikati. Mikati is the third person to try to form a
government in the aftermath of the Beirut port blast last August, since when
ministers have served in a caretaker capacity only.
The deadlock is freezing international assistance to help haul Lebanon out of
the abyss. As every aspect of daily life unravels,
sometimes deadly scuffles have broken out at petrol stations and many fear for
their safety. “I feel like crying about everything,”
said Farah, a 21-year-old living in the mountainous Chouf region. “I’m scared
we’ll get to the point where we can’t leave this country, even from the airport
… We only have the sea left. I feel we’ll drown trying to get out.”
The culmination of decades of state corruption and mismanagement, the
crisis entered a new phase last week when the central bank said it would no
longer finance fuel imports at subsidised exchange rates. With its currency
reserves depleted, the bank has said new legislation is needed to allow use of
the mandatory foreign reserve for such imports. The government demanded prices
be left unchanged. There has been no resolution to the stand-off. The crisis has
sunk the currency by more than 90% and sent more than half the population into
poverty.
Cleansing the Lebanese monetary system
Chibli Mallat/August 17/2021
My fellow Lebanese, as the deadlock deepens politically, the economic collapse
of our national currency will get worse, in a 1923 Weimar-like spiral. For the
generation that doesn't know about the crisis, it was the worst one ever in the
financial history of Germany.
To lessen the crisis on our daily life, I strongly suggest that the private
sector deals to the extent possible ONLY in strong foreign currencies, mainly
USD and Euros.
When you take a cab, pay in USD not in LBP, when you pay your restaurant bill,
pay in USD not in LBP, when you pay your employees pay in USD not in LBP, when
you pay your doctor, pay in USD not in LBP. This will slowly contribute to the
cleansing of our monetary system.
Now that the governmental crisis will get worse, this is what we can do to
protect ourselves.
I will work with leading financial and legal experts to provide a position paper
in the coming days to support this proposal, but I do not want to delay a
conclusion I have reached after thorough reflection.
God help us against the irresponsible rulers of Lebanon.
The call above was published on 15 July.[1] I examine in this brief policy paper
a selection of themes articulated on the concept behind the proposal, namely to
use “good money to drive out bad money.”[2] The question has two main
components, (a) whether such a policy is beneficial, (b) whether it is feasible
to cleanse the collapsed monetary system in Lebanon considering the State
institutions are paralyzed and the government dysfunctional until further
notice. The proposal is for Revolutionary Civil Society (as opposed to the
State) driving Lebanese society at large to use only USD [3] in its daily
transactions.[4]
a) A beneficial policy?
Readers who studied economic history may recognize the expression as the reverse
of the so-called Gresham law.[5] In the 16th century, Thomas Gresham is said to
have coined it. In time, the received wisdom of economists has established in
fact the reverse likelihood that “good money drives out bad money.” It means
that people prefer dealing with a strong and stable currency in their daily
transactions rather than with a constantly debased currency.[6]
This is such an obvious statement for every one of us Lebanese that we prefer
dealing with USD instead of our national currency. We could move straight onto
the feasibility part. Yet it may be useful to elaborate further on the nature of
the monetary crisis in Lebanon to provide some perspective on the usefulness of
the proposal, but also on its limits. Driving out the LBP from the market will
not solve the multiple economic, political and moral crises in the country. But
this paper suggests that it will alleviate the monetary crisis considerably.
We live in Lebanon at least three tiers of crisis. One is
political-constitutional and is expressed in the unavailability of a government,
namely a cabinet, to perform its constitutional role at the head of the
executive branch and of the administration. Even when there was a cabinet during
the presidential tenure of Michel Aoun which started in October 2016, it was
dysfunctional and ineffective, and drove the country further into the economic
crisis. It is not the purpose of this paper to address what must and should be
done to fix this tier which goes to the heart of the paralysis of the country,
save to say that we have to find solutions, to the extent possible, outside
government.
Then there is the economic crisis: the Lebanese banking system has collapsed in
a way which may be a first in history.[7] Prodromes started in the flight of all
the foreign banks from the Lebanese market.[8] To my knowledge, the monetary
crisis is unique in the combination of banks separating people from their
deposits in both national and foreign currencies with no end in sight, and the
vertiginous collapse of the money.[9]
How did we get here? In an obviously complex scene, the collapse of the banking
system, and the concomitant collapse of the LBP, were owed to two major causes:
an increasingly tight compliance regime forced by the USG to dry up Hizballah’s
funding sources and facilitators; and the bank owners’ own mismanagement in
tandem with the Lebanese Central Bank (LCB) governor and the political class.
Let me address those two causes in turn. Especially under the Trump
administration, the financial pressures on Hizballah, mainly through OFAC
(Office of Foreign Assets Control, part of the Department of Treasury),
increased against Lebanese banks and wealthy individuals suspected of supporting
the party, mainly Shi‘i owned ones, and effectively bankrupted them. This also
took a toll on the whole sector in terms of confidence, which is the sine qua
non existential condition of banking.[10] In turn the Lebanese banks which
survived carried out a joint policy with the LCB to increase deposits to
reassure depositors and attract further funds from abroad which would benefit
from the banking secrecy law and high interest rates. The policy worked for a
while, and the deposits in USD continued to rise to an estimated 200 $billion
USD-denominated deposits in mid-2019.[11]
Against the rosy figures of increasing bank deposits in USD, coming in large
part from abroad, disaster was looming. Practically all other economic
indicators were in the red, notably trade balance and the deficit, and the
Lebanese bankers were offering far higher interest rates than available in the
West, in LBP but also in USD. This was sustained by an increasingly callous
Ponzi scheme, where new deposits would finance the higher interest rates to keep
depositors happy and to attract new funds. It was untenable.
In May 2016, the first big shock came when the Central Bank governor designed
its first “financial engineering” stunt, an illegal scheme which injected on the
bank’s books up to 5 billion USD. Banque Audi, one of the three main Lebanese
banks, was reported to have lost heavily in a Turkey-based adventure, and the
governor of the LCB “engineered”.[12] This the governor did to save Audi and
other banks in similar difficult situations, but also in contradiction to his
own conservative policy since he took over the LCB in 1992. This 5 billion USD
scheme destroyed the reputation of the Lebanese sector, built over a century, in
the international banking system. No bank stood up to the governor, and a stream
of other banks cashed in on the scheme.
Reader: banking is not rocket science, however straight the banker’s suit and
proverbial his arrogance as the holder of your money. Banking is a process with
one single transaction. The bank uses deposits (the money, which as client, you
entrust them with), to lend customers big and small at a rate higher than the
interest they give you on your deposit. Because there are masses of depositors,
money adds up at the disposal of the bank and multiplies for other use. This is
called risk, and banks work on the assumption that not all depositors will
retrieve their deposits at the same time. Multiplication allows all kinds of
other payable services (cheques, transfers, mortgages, commercial bills etc),
but the bottom line remains the same, and is based on your confidence that the
bank will give you your deposits safely back upon your timely demand.[13] When
confidence fails, a run on the banks destroys the system.
The Lebanese banks overexposed your trust in them, in part by shifting your
deposits through the Central Bank, which was giving them unreasonable profits.
Effectively, the LCB governor was responding to growing clientelist urges from
the government, skyrocketing the deficit by pumping the people’s deposits. This
included astronomic increases in public sector salaries and pensions, for
instance Lebanese University professors and army officials, and the plethoric
hiring of civil servants. The LCB governor was also conducting a policy contrary
to his original cautious, conservative policy (which allowed the country to sail
through the 2009 world crisis) to maintain and increase his personal power and
stay at the helm come what may, whilst lying to the public about the allegedly
secure situation of the Lebanese lira. In at least a decade-long process of
mutual services at the expense of the depositors between the Central bank
governor, the private banks, and corrupt politicians, bankers dared not say no
to the LCB governor, and he did not say no to the politicians whom he did not
want to displease, because to say no threatened his holding on to the LCB
governorship for a quarter of a century. In short, the private bankers and the
Central Bank ruined the country economically, egged on and arm-twisted by
politicians who used the growing mass of deposits in the private banks to
non-economic ends.
The collapse in the summer of 2019 was a long-announced disaster staring the
country in the face. The moment of truth was accelerated by two events: the
first was the open alignment, with a rocket in hand, of the Lebanese foreign
minister with Hizballah.[14] His siding with Iran against Saudi Arabia and the
Sunni world was vaunted to no end. As the detachment of Lebanese foreign policy
from its traditional Arab allies moved towards Iran, Prime minister Hariri
remained silent instead of standing up to a wayward foreign minister supported
by Hizbullah. His Saudi patrons had warned him against the election of the
Lebanese foreign minister’s father-in-law in 2016. They called him in to Riyadh
when Lebanese foreign policy expressed itself increasingly as advocacy for Iran
in regional fora. He did not heed their mounting anger. They called him in again
in November 2017 to arrest him and force him to resign. He was let free thanks
to US and French pressure and reinstated. Through the perceived alignment with
Iran, Lebanon steadily lost its Arab economic depth, on which a sizeable part of
the population relied directly or indirectly for their daily living. There is no
central Beirut without Arab Gulf money.
The second event was the plain lie of the LCB governor to us, the Lebanese
public. Looking straight into the cameras, he said that “the Lebanese pound
could not be safer.”[15] This was at the time when the banks were increasing
their interest rate astronomically to calm their customers, reaching 15, even 20
pc on the LBP, and up to 15 pc in some cases on the USD, which faced almost zero
interest in the world markets.[16] Doomsday was staring us in the face
throughout the summer and fall of 2019, and those responsible: the bankers, the
LCB, officials playing ostrich, all lying through their teeth.
Large depositors (in USD) started pulling out their money from the banks in the
summer of 2019. The flight of USD accelerated, and the LBP was undermined first
on the moneychangers’ market. Confidence collapsed and people made a run on the
banks to withdraw their money. Banks first closed shop, and with the support of
the LCB, froze people’s access to their money. The banks bluntluy deprived
depositors from their deposits: they robbed their customers clean, there is no
other word for this.
No one was held accountable, to date: the lead bankers are still there, arrogant
and sitting on their boards unperturbed. Bankers reelected the same man as
president of their Association. The LCB is still there with at its head a man
accused of corruption in various legal actions in Europe. The three top public
officials are still there, give or take the persona of Saad Hariri. The Lebanon
nonviolent revolution, massive and ongoing, has not succeeded in removing them
from power, and the rot deepens whose utter expression is the down spiral of the
national currency.
In light of this reading of the background, the upshot is clear: in our daily
transactions, we cannot, we must not, rely on private banks, the Lebanese
Central Bank, or the political rulers. Since we have been unable yet to hold
them accountable despite our massive nonviolent revolution, let alone remove
them from power despite their incompetence and crimes, we must limit their harm
to the full extent possible by sidelining them and taking the monetary future of
the country in our own hands. A key part of their monetary power revolves over
the LBP inexorable collapse against foreign healthy currencies. We must face the
fact that our national currency is clinically dead, and cleanse our life from
the miseries resulting from its artificial support.
b) A feasible policy?
Since it is evident that we all think in USD and not in Lebanese lira -- again,
I have no particular reverence for the USD, one can use Euros or rials or
whatever stable currency one is comfortable with --, how do we retire the old
lady until the other conditions for its revival, i.e. the political and economic
ones, are settled?
In the opening cite, I propose we conform our daily life to the reality of our
transacting perception, which is in USD. We use LBP but think in USD. It is
therefore imperative that we conform our perception to the reality, and pay the
taxi driver in USD, the medicine we buy in USD, our employees in USD, that we
bill our clients in USD, so that we slowly and surely drive, to the extent
possible, the LBP out of the Lebanese monetary market.
The critic will immediately react as follows: but where do we find the USD? In
an open world market of which Lebanon remains part, dollars circulate massively.
We import USD every day from abroad, mainly in the shape of foreign remittances.
It is the foreign remittances that sustain what is left of the people’s
revenues. It was estimated in 2020, despite Covid, at 7 billion USD. [17] This
is money that came into the country fully in foreign currency, and continues to
sustain us against an impending famine, approximately 1000 dollars per annum per
capita. In addition, foreign governments and public and private institutions are
also helping by pumping in relief to NGOs, the Syrian refugees, sometimes
ministries and their programs, even the Lebanese army, and various businesses,
all in foreign currency. Figures for this are scant, but the amount may be
significant.[18] And all visitors to Lebanon operate in foreign currencies,
namely USD. All of the above money is in hard currency and is better kept in
circulation in hard currency. Good money drives out bad money in our head. The
question is how to make it real, and how to organize the cleansing for us and
the bulk of the Lebanese population.[19]
The critic will say: but how does it solve our problems? First, I agree that the
impact of the present paper is limited, and such a policy is insufficient to
solve our political and economic problems. It will not even solve our monetary
problems in full. My proposal is meant to lessen the citizen’s despair of seeing
the LBP reach ever lower bottoms, and to start bringing sanity to the market by
retiring an ever deteriorating currency. The stability of currency is an
essential part of daily life. The collapse of the national currency dominates
every other economic aspect for the citizen. Better not to deal with a fading
currency than to continue being robbed everyday by the growing chasm between the
LBP and the USD.
What about civil servants, who are paid in debased LBP by the State? To be
candid, the sergeant in the army who receives today the equivalent of 100 USD
for salary is better served if he does not receive next month the equivalent of
80 USD. The tragedy that affects him and every other civil servant and employee
will not subside, because the state will continue to print money and debase its
own currency. My proposal will not solve the civil service problem, it is
destined to help the private sector in the real economy pull itself together in
a cleansing operation that stops the hemorrhage. To get better, the civil
service needs to be cleansed from atrophy, plethoric hiring, and corruption. The
tragic impoverishment of the hundreds of thousands of state employees continues,
and there is no monetary solution for that. This is the subject for another
policy paper.[20]
The more sophisticated observer will say, but what about legal tender? In all
sovereign countries, the national currency is legal tender. You must accept LBP
otherwise you stand in violation of the law. This however does not apply to the
present proposal, which is not coercive. Most of the private sector is free to
pay and to ask for payment in foreign currency.[20] If a legal tender objection
is raised, your average citizen will ask for parity of the day and seek to
change her money into a stable currency before the LBP in her possession
collapses further. It starts therefore with each of us extricating ourselves in
reality, as we do it effectively in our mind, by dealing as much as possible in
USD.
There are some sectors which are likely to oppose this proposal.[21] They can do
little against a scheme which people can adopt voluntarily. This is where the
concept of Civil Society, and more specifically Revolutionary Civil Society,
becomes key. This is also where this proposal requires a considered and studied
support from international actors, Western and Arab ones in particular, to help
the Lebanese out of the criminal policy conducted by the ruling class.
Nor can the ‘government’, and there is none, and no prospects for an effective
one, prevent us from adopting this proposal, which is purely voluntary. Nothing
in the legal tender laws prevents you from paying in USD, or prevents the other
party in the transaction from receiving the money in USD. The more USDs
circulate, the less LBPs circulate, the faster the rebirth of the economy on the
monetary side of our ever worsening impoverishment.
So Lebanese friends in the RCS, rise and cleanse our monetary system, to the
extent possible, from our ever-worsening national currency. Use foreign
currency, to the extent possible, in your daily transactions.
ENDNOTES
1. My Facebook page, at https://www.facebook.com/chibli.mallat/posts/4174857842593132.
As announced in the FB entry, this is a policy paper for the unique situation of
Lebanon in the coming together of various crises. Since then, I had the benefit
of thoughtful friends across the globe, too many to mention here, with sometime
pointed criticism. Within Lebanon, the paper was discussed in particular with
TMT (Rally for the Revolution) colleagues. This paper represents my personal
views. Considering the continued economic and financial collapse of the country,
it is meant to provoke a healthy and informed public debate on what to do in the
light of a failed government and the lasting paralysis of institutions.
2. The traditional concept is formulated in reverse, “bad money drives out good
money”, and is known as ‘Gresham’s law.’ The Wikipedia entry on Gresham’s law is
sufficient to understand that a) Gresham’s law was never expressed by Gresham
but that it was projected backwards in 1860 to him, and b) that “Gresham’s law”
now works in reverse in the dominant view of economists.
3. The reference to USD facilitates the discussion. There are other solid
currencies, incl. the Euro or the Pound sterling, or even the yen or the Saudi
rial, which could be adopted. If the proposal has traction, one could organize a
simple enough basket system of solid currencies. An early comment suggested “a
currency board,” and should be considered together with its feasibility as a
private initiative from the citizenry.
4. The concept of civil society has a long and rich pedigree. The best
understanding can be found in Robert Fossaert’s works, esp. La Société (Paris, 8
vols, 1977-1996) on the site of the Chicoutimi library in Québec. Fossaert
(d.2015)
defined CS as always relative to the State, insofar as one can conceive circles
of society outside the State (individuals, families, neighborhoods, trade unions
etc.) There is no CS without the State, so the concept is always of a couple, or
duality, CS and State. See in vol.5 of La Société, Les Etats, ch.18. This is
generally accepted in the use of the term. I add here the concept of
Revolutionary Civil Society (RCS) which is a temporary expression of Lebanese CS
as it was let down by the State and now is called upon to ignore it.
5. The reverse principle advocated here, i.e. “good money drives out bad money”,
is sometimes dubbed the Thiers law, after Adolphe Thiers, a leading historian of
the French revolution (and first president of France in the third Republic).
Thiers concluded from the rejection of the ever-diminishing value of the
paper-note known as the Assignat by the French driving it out by using another
currency. In Denationalization of Money -The Argument Refined, An Analysis of
the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies (London 1976), at 43 (footnotes
omitted), celebrated economist F.A. Hayek concludes in his analysis of Gresham’s
law: “ Indeed, whenever inflation got really rapid, all sorts of objects of a
more stable value, from potatoes to cigarettes and bottles of brandy to eggs and
foreign currencies like dollar bills, have come to be increasingly used as
money, so that at the end of the great German inflation it was contended that
Gresham's law was false and the opposite true. It is not false, but it applies
only if a fixed rate of exchange between the different forms of money is
enforced.” An additional agreed exception to Gresham’s law operates in an
international context, which is the case in Lebanon: “In the market for
international exchange media a similar tendency for good coins to be favored
over bad stemmed from the absence of government authorities capable of enforcing
legal tender laws and other rules compelling the acceptance of official coins
‘by tale’ (that is, at par or face value, rather than by weight) beyond national
borders.” George Selgin, “Gresham's Law”, EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert
Whaples. June 9, 2003, at http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/selgin.gresham.law.
6. People here are the average citizen. Obviously some sectors benefit from the
collapse of the currency, and I will address this further towards the end of
(b), esp. at n.19, but only marginally.
7. In a thoughtful Spring 2021 paper of the World Bank, Lebanon Sinking (To the
Top 3), the crisis was described at 19-21 as one of the ten, possibly three,
worst financial crises documented since 1900. Unfortunately, the details in the
paper are not supportive or clear enough, mainly because the criteria include
speculation on the duration of the crisis, the ignorance of the effective
confiscation by the banks of customers’ deposits, which is an enduring feature
of the Lebanese collapse, and the somewhat confused choice of crises in history.
8. I noted this worrying trend that HSBC and other international banks have
closed their branches in Beirut. “Ofac, péril en la demeure”, OLJ, 14 June 2016,
reprinted in my Boussole, Beirut 2019, 177-81. Citibank Lebanon reacted by
saying that they were still operating a branch in Lebanon. As it turned out,
Citibank had reduced its presence almost exclusively to large commercial
transactions, and was therefore not functioning as a normal, deposit bank. Id.
at 178.
9. I am not aware of such callous treatment of customers in the banking system
anywhere in the world without the collapse of the defaulting bank. On the second
aspect, the vertiginous collapse of the LBP, I suggest to the interested reader
Adam Fergusson, When Money Dies : The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse, London
1975. It is about the collapse of the German mark in 1922-3, until the
government replaced it altogether in November 1923 with the trust of the
population. The dynamic is spectacular and resembles Lebanon, but we have no
government to retire the LBP, and zero trust in either banks or officialdom.
This is why only RCS can do it.
10. Mallat, “Ofac, péril en la demeure”, above n.7 (Arguing that Lebanon’s
banking sector is under existential threat with the heightened warnings from
Washington).
11. “[B]anking sector assets had increased 83 per cent in eight years to $253bn,
equal to roughly five times the country’s economic output.” Junko Oguri, “Part
II of Crisis in Lebanon: Buildup of Interrelated Challenges”, Yale School of
Management, Program on Financial Stability, 21 September 2020, 11. By
comparison, in the mid-1990s, when the currency was effectively pegged to the
USD by the first Rafic Hariri government at ca 1500 LBP to one USD (at the time
of writing it is over 22,000 LBP), USD deposits in Lebanese private banks were
put at 20 billion usd. With dollarization estimated at over 80 pc when the
monetary crisis hit hard from the end of Summer 2019, this means the holdings of
Lebanese banks in USD stood at ca $200 billion. There are no reliable figures on
the flight of capital in or around the beginning of the collapse of
confidence in the pegged currency, but it happened massively, and accelerated
the run on the banks.
12. Mallat, “Alternance”, OLJ, 23 May 2017, in Boussole, above n.7, 134-8
(Arguing that in addition to the “financial engineering” stunt by the Central
Bank governor who had vaunted until then his conservatively prudent policy,
remaining in post for such a long-time entrenched corruption in government.)
13. The best introductory book on banking remains Jacques Lavrillère’s,
L’Industrie des Banquiers, Paris 1966. It is particularly adequate for the way
Lebanon’s banking sector (partly modelled after the French) worked until the LCB
“financial engineering” in 2015-6. Lavrillère is a pseudonym of Robert Fossaert,
above n. 3. The book is available at http://classiques.uqac.ca/.../Industrie_des_banquiers.html.
14. For a picture on 5 May 2019 of Gebran Bassil, son-in-law of the president
and then Lebanese foreign minister, donning a large smile while holding a rocket
offered to him by Hizballah, e.g. https://www.albawaba.com/.../lebanons-bassil-gets-rocket....
15. As late as 11 November 2019, the LCB governor was still repeating that the
LBP is in good health “thanks to the policy of the LCB” and banks safe on
account “of the high dollarization” of the sector, “and the stability of the LBP
as the expression of confidence in the continued entry of the dollar to
Lebanon.” See quotes e.g. in “Hakem masraf lubnan: hafazna ‘ala istiqrar si‘r
al-sarf rughm al-dughut (LCB governor: we have succeeded in keeping the
stability of the currency despite all the pressures), Al-‘Arabi al-Jadid, 11
November 2019. By then, the banks had closed shop for two weeks to prevent a run
by customers to retrieve their money. This was followed by the so-called
‘Capital control’ policy, which meant that, in addition to the collapse of the
national currency, the deposits were no longer freely accessible to their
owners.
16. For some figures on the rise of interest rates on deposits, see https://tradingeconomics.com/lebanon/deposit-interest-rate.
The statistics here do not quite match the frenzied rise of interest rates
before capital controls were established, or the debasing of the USD denominated
deposits once people’s monies were confiscated. At the time of writing, they
trade at between 15 and 20 pc of their nominal values, and the strange way it
works in Lebanon takes the shape of cheques written on one’s USD account to
another person with a USD account, with neither able to cash it. Typically A
will write a cheque of 1 million USD to buy B’s house valued at 150,000 or
200,000 USD.
17. In a brief response on this paper, Prof Ishac Diwan made two strong
comments: “I estimate that about 8-10 bil /yr enter Leb these days, in
remittances and exports - less then half what used to come in. If these scarce
dollars are used as a store of value, rather than for imports (as is happening),
imports will naturally have to fall further (i.e, equivalently, the XR will
become more devalued).Thisis too bad (and in a way an “inefficiency”), but it
cannot be avoided in the absence of the needed reforms.
- Finally, if, or as, the movement towards dollarization accelerates, printing
money to finance deficits and LBP withdrawals from banks become increasingly
unfeasible: every injection of new LBP will be even more inflationary that
before, leading to a deadly spiral. This will end up sending rapidly the $
towards a million LBP. This may end up a softer way of "destroying the old
system” than a civil war.” (email, 21 July 2021).
18. There is also a current proposal from the World Bank to create a fund that
takes care of the poorer 700,000 families in the country. This is obviously the
occasion for a significant injection into the economy of foreign currency.
19. Amongst the various proposals, the most adequate may be to create an
altogether new bank, based abroad, through which financial support flows into
Lebanon : “Lebanon’s inability and unwillingness to structure a financial rescue
along the lines of the standard IMF playbook bode ill for the country’s future.
The only solution may be to devise a new playbook with unorthodox approaches
that have not been used before but may be better suited to Lebanon’s
situation... As an alternative, a group of international lenders (IMF, CEDRE,
and the United States) might form a new legal entity under UK or Swiss law and
provide it with substantial capital. This new entity – call it the New Lebanon
Bank (NLB) – would begin with a clean balance sheet and a large capital base.”
James Rickards, Crisis in Lebanon: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, Monograph
from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 4 August 2020, available at
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/08/04/crisis-in-lebanon/, 35. In another
thoughtful comment
on the present paper, Prof Ibrahim Warde expressed his skepticism on the
feasibility of the policy which requires nothing less than a ‘heroic’ stance
from people who have scant dollars to afford the luxury of parting with them.
(email, 30 July 2021) While I share his concern, I believe that our people in
Lebanon have shown ‘heroism’ and unimaginable resilience since they set on the
nonviolent revolution that has been going on relentlessly over the past two
years. A sense of community by way of a shared common vision to lessen the
impact of the currency spiral downwards must also be supported by the
considerable financial power that Western countries command. I repeat this
suggestion in the last paragraph.
19. As the LBP continues its devaluation, employees in the public sector are
likely to flee a job that won’t pay for a few days livelihood. I hope that the
proposal will help alleviate this tragic development by a) providing
possibilities for productive employment in the private sector for moonlighters
and defectors, b) ridding the public sector from plethoric and ineffective
employment and c) forcing out the political class in power so that good
government is possible. I admit that this is a tall order, but it is peripheral
to the current proposal which concerns how the rest of society, specifically RCS,
can extricate itself from the monetary spiral downwards.
20. In an informative comment by Prof Georges Ghanem, he confirmed this policy
in the health sector, one of the most sensitive in the country because of a
confluence of factors: it is massive, vital, sits between public and private
agents, and uniquely advanced traditionally in Lebanon. Ghanem commented that
the “healthcare we are elaborating, 1) plans with fresh US Dollars premium
payment; 2) plans using healthcare-based dynamic exchange rate; and 3) [seeks
to] suspend current co-NSSF policies and re-issue co-Nil policies. Fresh dollars
should be injected in all businesses in order to assure some stability. We are
entering a period of international aid and support; all supportive funds will be
in dollars; portion of salaries will be (is already) on fresh dollars
basis....all this will help to contain inflation and stabilize the
market....relatively.” (e-mail, 26 July 2021).
21. Bankers lose control over the money flows in the real economy if the LBP
dries up, but they benefit on the long run from currency stability when the
economic circulation is restored on a healthier basis; the LCB leadership loses
their raison d’être, but it is time to retire them. Moneychangers have been
amassing small fortunes but their services will remain needed for a while. The
main problem is the public sector, but it has become an increasingly hollow
shell when salaries have diminished by a factor of over 10 (this, when the USD
traded at 15,000 LBP three months ago), and employees and pensioners will see
their revenues increasingly hit. Together, these sectors may appear as a big and
powerful group, but they cannot prevent the application of the proposal.
FDD | Crisis in Lebanon
The Latest English LCCC
Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 17-18/2021
Explosions heard in Quneitra province
in southwestern Syria
Reuters/17 August ,2021
Explosions were heard in Quneitra province in southwestern Syria near the border
with Israel, state media said in an area where military defectors say
Iranian-backed militias are dug in. Pro-Damascus Lebanese Mayadeen television
channel said that Israel missiles struck an area near the Druze town of Hadr
near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights but gave no details.
Former US President Bush expresses
‘deep sadness’ over Afghan situation
NNA/August 17/2021
Former U.S. President George Bush said he and former First Lady Laura Bush feel
“deep sadness” over the events unfolding in Afghanistan.
“Laura and I have been watching the tragic events unfolding in
Afghanistan with deep sadness. Our hearts are heavy for both the Afghan people
who have suffered so much and for the Americans and NATO allies who have
sacrificed so much,” the former president said in a statement issued late on
Monday.
Macron Says Afghanistan Must Not Again be 'Sanctuary of
Terrorism'
Agence France Presse/August 17/2021
French President Emmanuel Macron said that Afghanistan should not become again
the "sanctuary of terrorism" that it was until the U.S.-led invasion two decades
ago, after the Taliban regained control of the country. "This is key for
international security and peace... we will do everything for Russia, the United
States and Europe to cooperate efficiently as our interests are the same,"
Macron said in a televised address from his summer residence. Macron called on
the U.N. Security Council to come up with a "reasonable and unified" response
and said he had spoken to Prime Minister Boris Johnson of fellow permanent UNSC
member Britain, adding that "joint initiatives" would be agreed in the next
hours. He described the situation in Afghanistan as an "important challenge for
our own security" and a "fight against a common enemy of terrorism.""Our actions
will above all be aimed at fighting actively against Islamist terrorism in all
its forms," said Macron. "Terrorist groups are present in Afghanistan and seek
to profit from the instability." He said the European Union would set up an
initiative to thwart the large migrant flows now expected from the country,
cracking down on illegal people smuggling rings that risk emerging. France,
Germany and other EU countries would put together a response that was "robust,
coordinated and united" to prevent irregular migration by harmonizing criteria
and showing European solidarity. "We must anticipate and protect ourselves
against significant irregular migratory flows that would endanger the migrants
and risk encouraging trafficking of all kinds," he said.
But he emphasized that France will continue to do "its duty to protect
those who are most under threat in Afghanistan." He said almost 800 Afghans
including translators and cooks who helped France on the ground had already been
taken to French territory and dozens more who remain in Afghanistan would be
helped to leave. Macron also said France was ready to help activists, artists
and journalists who risk being targeted because of their work. "We will help
them as it is the honor of France to be side-by-side with those who share our
values," he said. Addressing fears that the Taliban will restrict the rights of
women, he added: "Afghan women have the right to live in freedom and dignity."
"We will say very clearly to those who opt for war, obscurantism and blind
violence that they have chosen isolation," he said.
US intelligence warned over the summer of Afghan
military collapse: Report
Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English/17 August ,2021
Classified assessments by US intelligence agencies over the summer warned of the
rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s military despite public assurances from
President Joe Biden’s administration that it would have been unlikely to happen
as fast at it did, according to a New York Times report. One specific report
dated in July spelled out the growing risks to the Afghan capital of Kabul,
adding that Afghanistan’s government was unprepared for an assault on the city
by the Taliban, a person familiar with the intelligence told The New York Times.
According to the report, a senior administration official who spoke to The New
York Times on the condition of anonymity confirmed that “US intelligence
agencies never offered a clear prediction of an imminent Taliban takeover.”The
US said Monday that it would only recognize a Taliban government in Afghanistan
if it respects the rights of women and shuns extremist movements such as
al-Qaeda. “Ultimately when it comes to our posture towards any future government
in Afghanistan, it will depend upon the actions of that government. It will
depend upon the actions of the Taliban,” State Department spokesman Ned Price
told reporters when asked about recognition.
Taliban takeover leaves Iran and Turkey fearing refugee
influx
AFP/August 17/2021
The Taliban's rapid takeover of Afghanistan has left regional heavyweights Iran
and Turkey with a headache -- both countries may see an opportunity to boost
their influence but neither wants a further influx of refugees.
This is especially the case right now as both countries are battling the
coronavirus pandemic and facing economic difficulties.
Analysts say everything depends on the unknown factor -- whether the Taliban
present a more moderate stance that allows for international cooperation or they
return to the unbridled extremism that led to their overthrow in the wake of the
September 11, 2001 attacks. "The situation is a huge risk for Turkey, there is
no doubt. Iran will also stand to lose if the Taliban returns to its old ways
and provides a safe haven" for Islamist extremists, Asli Aydintasbas, senior
fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told AFP. Iran and
Turkey both risk seeing substantial inflows of refugees, many of whom cross from
Iran into Turkey in the hope of reaching Europe. Both
already host large refugee populations -- 3.6 million Syrians in Turkey and 3.5
million Afghans in Iran -- and tolerance at home is running out.
The Covid-19 pandemic has hit Iran hard, pushing the sanctions-battered
country further into crisis, while in Turkey the economic growth that was always
the bulwark of Erdogan's popularity has faded away.
Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan said last week that he was prepared to
meet the Taliban leadership in a bid to secure peace while Iran's new hardline
President Ebrahim Rasi said the US military "defeat" in Afghanistan was a chance
to bring peace to the country. On Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut
Cavusoglu talked of "positive messages" coming from the Taliban on protection
for civilians and foreigners, expressing hope they would follow through with
positive actions.
Two Armenian Soldiers Killed In Clashes With Azerbaijan
NNA/August 17/2021
Two Armenian soldiers were killed in border clashes with Azerbaijani forces on
Monday, Yerevan said, in the latest military incident between the Caucasus
rivals since last year's war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The six-week war last autumn claimed about 6,500 lives and ended in
November with a Russian-brokered ceasefire under which Armenia ceded territories
it had controlled for decades. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia have reported
occasional shootouts in recent months along their shared border, sparking fears
of a flare up in the territorial dispute. The Armenian defence ministry said
Azerbaijani forces opened fire on their positions at 09:50 (0550 GMT) on Monday
from Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave in southwestern Armenia. An Armenian
soldier was wounded in the stomach and died on the way to hospital, the
statement said. According to the ministry, Azerbaijan "attempted another
provocation" on Monday evening, opening fire and claiming the life of another
Armenian solider. "This was the second Armenian
soldier to die during this day," the ministry said, adding that the Azerbaijani
side had also suffered losses. In a statement,
Azerbaijan's defence ministry said the clashes were started by the Armenian side
and denied any casualties among its military personnel.
Tensions between the ex-Soviet rivals have been running high since May,
after Armenia accused Azerbaijan of seizing pockets of territory including along
a lake shared by the two countries.
Turkey drops Kabul airport plans, offers Taliban ‘technical
support’
The Arab Weekly/August 17/2021
ANKARA--Turkey has dropped plans to take over Kabul airport after NATO’s
withdrawal from Afghanistan but is ready to provide support if the Taliban
request it, two Turkish sources said on Monday amid turmoil following the
militant group’s victory in Afghanistan. Turkey, which has 600 troops in
Afghanistan, had offered to keep them in Kabul to guard and operate the airport
after other NATO members pulled out and was discussing details with Washington
and the government of President Ashraf Ghani. The
plans were thrown into disarray over the past two days after Ghani fled the
country on Sunday as the Taliban swept in to Kabul and thousands of Afghans,
also hoping to escape, thronged the airport on Monday.
The Taliban had also warned Turkey against keeping soldiers in Afghanistan to
run the airport, warnings which Ankara had dismissed before the Islamist
militants surged towards the capital. “At the point reached, there is total
chaos at Kabul airport. Order has been completely disrupted,” a Turkish source
told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. “At this stage, the process of
Turkish soldiers taking up control of the airport has automatically been
dropped,” the source added.
“However, in the event that the Taliban asks for technical support, Turkey can
provide security and technical support at the airport.”
The move to scrap the plans comes after the rapid conquest of Afghanistan
by Taliban insurgents following US President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US
forces after 20 years of war that cost almost a trillion dollars. Opposition
parties in Turkey had criticised the government’s plans, saying such a mission
would put Turkish soldiers at risk and calling for their immediate withdrawal
amid the uptick in violence. Until the Taliban’s entry
into Kabul, Turkish officials had said Ankara remained committed to the plans
and that it would wait to see how events unfolded in Kabul before making a final
decision. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has called for calm in
Afghanistan and criticised the Taliban’s advance, said last week he could meet
the Taliban as part of efforts to end the fighting in Afghanistan.
Ankara had viewed the airport mission as a potential area of cooperation
that could help heal frayed ties with Washington and other NATO allies, which
have been strained over several issues. Ankara on Monday evacuated civilians and
its citizens from Kabul on a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul. State
broadcaster TRT Haber said 324 people had been brought to Istanbul from Kabul on
the evacuation flight.
Saudi Arabia takes cautious approach towards Taliban
takeover
The Arab Weekly/August 17/2021
RIYADH--Saudi Arabia on Monday urged Taliban insurgents, who seized
Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, to preserve lives, property and security as
stipulated by “Islamic principles,” while Bahrain announced its intention to
initiate consultations with other Arab Gulf countries regarding the developments
in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia, experts say, appears
cautious about the unfolding developments in Afghanistan. The Saudis, however,
do not want to sound unconcerned about these developments, which may trigger new
regional tensions and turn Afghanistan into a safe haven for terrorist
organisations, particularly Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Saudis also do not want to see Afghanistan turn into a launchpad for
Iranian ambitions, as was the case in the past when Tehran exploited hotbeds of
tension to expand its foothold in the region, particularly in Iraq, Syria and
Yemen.
“The kingdom stands with the choices that the Afghan people make without
interference,” the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement carried by
official media. “Based on the noble principles of
Islam … the kingdom of Saudi Arabia hopes that the Taliban movement and all
Afghan parties will work to preserve security, stability, lives and property,”
the foreign ministry added. It also voiced hope the situation would stabilise as
soon as possible, as thousands of Afghans fearful of the Taliban thronged Kabul
airport in desperate efforts to leave. Five people were killed in the chaos on
Monday. Fellow Gulf state Qatar said it was seeking a peaceful transition in
Afghanistan and was doing its utmost to help efforts to evacuate diplomats and
foreign staff in international organisations from the country. Doha has hosted a
Taliban office since 2013 for peace talks and has played a central role in
trying to reach a political settlement in Afghanistan that included the
withdrawal of US troops. However, the accelerating
events in Afghanistan, with shocking and sometimes counterproductive results,
show that Qatar has not provided any service to the administration of US
President Joe Biden.
From this angle, observers expect that any criticism of the US administration
over its failure to manage the Afghan file will include Qatar, which has failed
to anticipate the course of events and help control the situation, despite its
extensive relations with Taliban leaders. “There is international concern about
the fast pace of developments and Qatar is doing its utmost to bring a peaceful
transition, especially after the vacuum that happened,” Qatari Foreign Minister
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told a news conference in the Jordanian
capital Amman. Bahrain, currently chairing the six-nation Gulf Cooperation
Council, said on Monday it would initiate consultations with fellow Gulf Arab
states regarding the situation in Afghanistan, state media reported. “The
council of ministers has tasked the foreign minister to coordinate and consult
with the GCC states regarding the developments in Afghanistan, in the framework
of Bahraini presidency” of the group, which also includes Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, the kingdom’s government media office said
on Twitter.
Pro-Iran militia muddles Iraq-Syria ties, sparks doubts
about conference
The Arab Weekly/August 17/2021
Disagreements have surfaced between the Iraqi government and the pro-Iranian
“Al-Hashed al-Shaabi” (Popular Mobilisation Forces-PMF) over inviting Syria to
attend the regional summit that Baghdad is hosting at the end of the month with
the aim of enhancing its ties to neighbours and international partners.
The PMF is nominally considered to be an official institution within the Iraqi
state but is seen often as taking its cues more from Tehran than Baghdad.
The Iraqi government intentionally avoided sending an invitation to Syria
because some other foreign powers that are invited to the summit, such as
France, do not recognise the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Nonetheless, the PMF took the initiative of sending an invitation to the Assad
regime, which was delivered personally by the militia’s chief Faleh al-Fayyad.
The Iraqi government denied sending an official summit invitation to Assad and
said it did not recognise any invitation addressed outside the official
channels.Iraqi sources believe the invitation could not be the result of a mere
misunderstanding or lack of coordination between the PMF and the Iraqi foreign
ministry. They link it instead to the tripartite alliance between Syria, the PMF
and Iran. They say Tehran was probably aware of Fayadh’s move and might have
been behind it, with the aim of embarrassing the Mustafa al-Kadhimi government
in Baghdad.
The same sources considered that inviting Assad in such murky circumstances
raises doubts about the Iraqi government’s ability to ensure the summit’s
success in the absence of internal consensus on the list of invitees.
Analysts expect the PMF in the coming days to escalate its pressures on Baghdad
since it opposes the presence in the summit of regional powers that it considers
to be “enemies of Iraq” while it advocates for the participation of its Syrian
ally. Nor does the PMF wish to be seen as condoning the exclusion of Syria from
the summit. The fact that the militia invited Syria to
attend the regional summit without coordination with the Iraqi foreign ministry
and probably against its will, constitutes the first obstacle to the gathering’s
success. This is a major diplomatic event which Iraq’s president Barham Salih
and premier Kadhimi, were hoping would be a defining milestone in post-2003
Iraq. Analysts say it is not clear how the Iraqi government can ensure the
summit’s success if militias continue to interfere in the choice of the
invitees.
The Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs put out a statement Monday about media
reports related to Fayyad’s invitation to Assad, during a meeting Sunday in the
Syrian capital, Damascus. The ministry said, “According to some media reports,
Iraqi government addressed an invitation to the Syrian government to participate
in the summit meeting of neighbouring countries, which is scheduled to be held
at the end of this month in Baghdad.”It continued that Baghdad is “not beholden
to this invitation” as “official invitations are sent through an official
communication in the name of the Iraqi prime minister. No other party has the
right to transmit an invitation in its name.”
On the Syrian side, the official news agency, SANA, said that President Assad
received a message from the Iraqi prime minister about the conference of Iraq’s
neighbouring countries to be held in Baghdad at the end of August.
The agency stated that the message conveyed by Fayyad stressed the importance of
Syrian-Iraqi coordination about the conference and its agenda. It added that
Assad and Fayyad also discussed, ” the measures taken to enhance joint bilateral
cooperation in all fields, especially with regard to combatting terrorism and
ensuring border security.”Over the past few days, Iraq has sent official summit
invitations to a number of countries including Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
French President Emmanuel Macron also announced a week ago, during a phone call
with Kadhimi, that he would attend.
Iraq is a major arena for competition between regional powers, especially Saudi
Arabia and Iran. Tensions between the two countries over the past few years have
adversely affected Iraq. The Kadhimi government seeks to narrow the gap between
its neighbours, especially on issues related to Iraq, in order to distance
itself from local rivalries and focus regional efforts to fight terrorist
groups. Baghdad also wants to boost its economic
relations with its neighbours and open its doors to investments especially in
areas devastated by the war against the Islamist State (ISIS). Kadhimi and Salih
view the regional conference as a means of enhancing the status of their country
and that of their own leadership ahead of forthcoming elections.
Saied vows no ‘turning back’ as Ennahda escalates rhetoric
The Arab Weekly/August 17/2021
TUNIS--In a clear reference to demands voiced by Ennahda, President Kais Saied
said those who think there can be a return to the status quo ante are
“deluded”.“Anyone who chooses to believe that I could be going back to where
things used to be is deluded,” he said during an impromptu session with security
and customs officials at Tunis Carthage Airport. Saied also dismissed related
calls for a roadmap and for the type of dialogue that some “imagine can be
organised”. He said, however, that a prime minister would be appointed, soon. On
July 25, the Tunisian leader suspended parliament and dismissed, the prime
minister using emergency powers granted to him by the constitution. Ennahda
called Monday on the president to expedite the appointment of a prime minister
and to lift the suspension of parliament. The tone and
substance of its statement were seen by analysts as a return to escalation as
the Islamist party has continued to waver between accepting the post-July 25
situation as a fait accompli and attempting to challenge the emergency powers
wielded by Saied.Some analysts linked the escalation to the party’s
disappointment over the results of a visit last week by a senior US delegation
to Tunisia.
The delegation did not back Ennahda’s demands while acknowledging the popular
support enjoyed by Saied’s actions.
In its statement, Ennahda specifically demanded the lifting of the parliament’s
suspension, the appointment of a competent prime minister, the end of what it
described as the “siege” imposed on government headquarters and a quick return
to the constitution. In a statement following a meeting of its executive bureau
on Monday, Ennahda said, “The continued failure to name a prime minister and end
the siege of (the government) headquarters disrupt the normal functioning of the
state and hinder the interests of citizens.” The movement called on President
Saied to “lift the suspension of the Tunisian parliament and quickly return to
the implementation of the constitution and end the grave breaches that poses for
the continuation of our democratic experience”. It
also called on him to halt “violation of rights and freedoms and infringement on
the most basic principles of the republic and the separation of powers.”
Neji Jalloul, Secretary-General of the Tunisian National Coalition party, said
that “Ennahda’s escalation against the president is an expected move” stemming
from the realisation of its problems with the Tunisian public.
He explained that, “President Saied revealed the weakness of the
internally-fractured movement” that has “come to its end socially” but still
insists on portraying itself as “a political force to be reckoned with.”Jelloul
added that the visiting US delegation refused to meet Ennahda despite the
“insistence” of the Islamist party.
Political activist Rafaa Tabib said that “there are indications that President
Saeed intends to move towards activating the democratic path” while
“marginalising” Ennahda. Tabib believes, “The movement’s statement is not only
directed at Kais Saied, but also at the rest of the political parties. Ennahda
does not want to fight this fight alone and is looking for allies. It has even
started courting some businessmen.”The apparent attempt by Ennahda to seek US
support has provoked angry reactions in Tunisia as a number of parties and
politicians expressed their rejection of “foreign interference in domestic
affairs”.
The president, last Friday, welcomed a US delegation headed by Principal Deputy
National Security Adviser Jon Finer which included Acting Assistant Secretary of
State for Near Eastern Affairs Joey Hood. According to
a statement issued by the president’s office, Saied told his American visitors
there is “no reason to worry about the values of freedom, justice and democracy,
which Tunisia shares with US society.”The emergency measures, added the
presidency statement, were introduced “in implementation of the constitution and
to meet the wide popular will, especially considering the political, economic
and social crises and widespread corruption and graft.”
New wave of resignations threatens unity of Morocco’s PJD
The Arab Weekly/August 17/2021
RABAT--Members and leaders from the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD)
in the Safi region in Morocco submitted their resignations to the regional
secretariat of the party, in a move that confirms divisions within the party and
threatens the unity of PJD ahead of the municipal and legislative elections
scheduled for September 8. More than 45 members of the PJD, including presidents
and communal advisers belonging to the provincial secretariats, made the move.
Among them is Abdeljalil El Badaoui, chairman of the Safi municipal council,
also founder of the party in the region. The wave of resignations came said one
of those who quit, because of “organisational dysfunctions, following the change
made by the central leadership of the party at the level of the electoral lists,
by the designation of the president of the communal council as head of the
regional elections list instead of third on the list which will contest the
legislative ones.”The party’s regional secretariat (the regional branch of the
Central Command) confirmed receiving a petition with a list of signatories. It
put out a statement saying it was surprised by the presence of some names on the
petition, including some former members who had left the party or others who had
previously submitted their resignations,” stressing that “some of those who
signed the petition were already preparing to join other political parties, in
order to run on their lists during the upcoming elections.”
The regional secretariat also considered those who initiated the petition had
adopted a “deceptive method” to lure some members into signing. This, regional
secretariat said, was based on “false information, according to some of the
signatories.”Rachid Lazrak, a professor of political science, told The Arab
Weekly “the PJD leaders are defending their interests and their electoral
position. What is happening now is the consequence of the party’s organisational
and political crises at various levels.”Lazrak also noted that “the focus is now
on the leaders and sheikhs of the Tawheed and Islah group, who will urge the
rebellious parties to sit at the dialogue table as the only way out of the
crisis.”
Badaoui had earlier objected to his removal from a local list for the municipal
and legislative elections, following his unprecedented defeat in the elections
for professional chambers , to be replaced by someone who owns a driving school.
Informed sources told The Arab Weekly that “Badaoui has been marginalised by the
party, especially as he is being pursued before the Financial Crimes Court in
Marrakesh on heavy charges related to the forgery of an official document as
well as the squandering of public funds.”The PJD, which heads the government
coalition, has been hit by a wave of resignations ahead of the municipal and
legislative elections, which portends a poor performance for the party.
Members of the PJD in the province of Agadir Idawtanan in southern Morocco had
earlier expressed their rejection of the parliamentary, regional and local
nomination lists for the Agadir commune, decrying a lack of transparency. In a
letter to Secretary-General Saad Eddine El Othmani, party members in Agadir
affirmed that the lack of transparency was happening on many levels, “to yield
odd results that do not reflect the party’s principles and the spirit of the
PJD’s democratic values.”The head of the Awlad Fares al-Hilla group in the
Borouj district of Settat province, his deputy and the local head of the Justice
and Development Party had also submitted their individual resignations from the
party’s structures, blaming organisational dysfunctions and the lack of
cooperation among party members at the regional level. Observers believe that
personal interests have become a determinant in the selection of candidates for
municipal and legislative elections, to maintain positions, privileges and
multiple compensations. The resignations, prompted by divisions and
disagreements between the leaders and members of the PJD, are also expected to
exacerbate the party’s crisis.
Poland Keeps Ambassador at Home amid Dispute with Israel
Associated Press/August 17/2021
Poland's government said Monday that its ambassador to Israel will remain in
Poland until further notice after Israel downgraded diplomatic ties with Warsaw
and strongly criticized a new Polish law that restricts the rights of Holocaust
survivors to reclaim property seized by the country's former communist regime.
Meanwhile, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki defended the new
legislation, which affects non-Jews and Jews alike, saying that it will end a
period of criminal abuse in his country. The spat erupted after Poland's
president's signed the new law on Saturday despite heavy pressure not to by the
United States government and warnings from Israel that it would harm ties.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid denounced it as "an immoral, anti-Semitic
law" as he recalled his nation's top diplomat from Poland only hours after it
was signed by President Andrzej Duda. Israel also suggested that the Polish
ambassador, who was on vacation in Poland, not return to Israel. Poland's
Foreign Ministry said Monday that Ambassador Marek Magierowski would stay in
Poland until further notice in response to what it called "unjustified actions"
by Israel and "unacceptable statements" by Lapid and other government members.
The dispute is the latest to erupt over history between Poland, home to Europe's
largest Jewish community before World War II, and Israel, which was founded as a
safe haven for Jews driven from Europe by German dictator Adolf Hitler and his
helpers. An earlier crisis broke out in 2018 over a Polish law that would have
criminalized false claims of Poland collaborating with Nazi Germany. Israel saw
it as an attempt to whitewash Polish crimes against Jews during the Holocaust.
The legislation was eventually watered down.
"The negative impact on our ties began the moment that Poland chose to begin
passing laws aimed at harming the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish people
in 2018," Lapid said on Sunday. "Gone are the days when Poles harmed Jews
without consequence."The new legislation establishes that any administrative
decision issued 30 years ago or more can no longer be challenged, meaning that
most property owners who had their homes or business seized in the communist era
can no longer get compensation. Israel says Poles today are profiting from the
homes and business which were taken first by Nazis and then by the Polish
communist regime.
Poland argues that it was the victim of Germany and does not bear responsibility
for the consequences of the original seizure of properties. Morawiecki on Monday
defended the law, arguing that it was needed to fight fraud carried out by
criminals who have claimed in courts to represent prewar owners, thus gaining
ownership of valuable properties to which they had no rights."Wild
re-privatization has led to many human tragedies in Poland. Tens of thousands of
people have been thrown out of the homes in which they have lived all their
lives -- just because there was a law in our law that allowed for an indefinite
'return' of real estate," Morawiecki said. He said the new law "restores
elementary justice and the rule of law in Poland."The law does not distinguish
between Jews and non-Jews, and the vast majority of those who will be affected
by the legislation are expected to be non-Jews.
Nonetheless, the issue looms large in relations with Israel and with the United
States due to the determination by both countries — as homes to many Holocaust
survivors — to defend their interests.
The issue of property claims is extremely complex. Before the war Poland was a
multi-ethnic state including citizens who were Jews, Germans and Ukrainians,
many of whom lost their properties. After the war, Poland's borders were shifted
westward, with some territory in the east given to Ukraine, while Poland gained
some former German territory. Poland has so far never passed comprehensive
legislation that would offer restitution or compensation to former owners.
Successive Polish governments have said the Polish state could not afford to do
so.
The Latest LCCC English analysis &
editorials published on
August 17-18/2021
Controversial German politician to head UN agency accused of helping Iran with
tech linked to nuclear program
Benjamin Weinthal and Ben Evansky/Fox News/August 17/2021
Gerd Müller prepares to outline his plans for UNIDO during the final week of
August
Iranian diplomats were reportedly seen last month holding talks at the United
Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), a sprawling, byzantine
Vienna-based bureaucracy. UNIDO provides funds and technology which critics say
enable the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism, Iran.
UNIDO’s incoming director is a German politician who made racist remarks
disparaging African men in 2016. Gerd Müller, the director general designate of
UNIDO, apologized for his 2016 remarks while Germany’s development minister for
what he called his “not very nuanced” statement.
UNIDO’s board in July recommended Müller to serve as the next director general
of an agency so marred by corruption, inefficiency and incompetence that the
United States pulled the plug on its support during the presidency of Bill
Clinton.
Müller still serves as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s development minister and is
slated to take over from the outgoing Chinese director-general.
The U.S. withdrew from UNIDO in 1996 because, according to Brett D. Schaefer of
the Heritage Foundation, it concluded that the agency “lacked a clear purpose
and was generally ineffective.”
UNIDO’s delivery of dual-use technology, which can be used for both military and
civilian purposes, to the Islamic Republic raises unsettling issues for the
agency and its soon-to-be director.
Daniel Roth, the Research Director for United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told
Fox News that, “we should be clear that UNIDO is not merely a waste of money and
a hotbed of corruption, like many other UN agencies. What makes UNIDO unique
among UN agencies is that it is actively albeit inadvertently helping to supply
U.S. and Western adversaries with important technology that can be used for
military and indeed terrorist purposes. Its endemic lack of transparency and
oversight simply exacerbate the problem.”
He noted that UNIDO has implemented projects in some of the world’s worst rogue
regimes, including Cuba, Venezuela and even North Korea, which are all under
U.S. sanctions.
A former diplomat who was accredited to all international organizations in
Vienna, including UNIDO, who asked to remain anonymous, called for U.S. action
and Congressional hearings into UNIDO: “The US and its allies should
independently visit UNIDO HQ Vienna and examine these projects and depose the
personnel.”
The veteran diplomat cautioned, “Any state which does not want rogue regimes to
acquire or refine their WMD systems should care about UNIDO and why it employs
2,500 personnel worldwide. [They] must care about what agents/nationals from
North Korea, Iran OIC [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] and NAM [Non-Aligned
Movement] are shuffling as employees between, UNIDO, IAEA [International Atomic
Energy Agency] and the CTBTO [Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Organization.]
UANI’s Roth said Müller’s task is that he “simply must suspend all current
Iranian projects. Given the IRGC’s [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]
tentacular and growing reach in every domain of the Iranian economy, it is
simply impossible to discount the inevitability that the IRGC will acquire
dangerous tech obtained through UNIDO projects.”
“UNIDO currently has 11 projects in Iran worth $17.5 million…. Right now, UNIDO
is currently funding a project titled, ‘Promoting and Upscaling Innovative SMEs
in the Islamic Republic of Iran,’ focusing on “improving competitiveness of ICT
[information and communications technology] start-ups and SMEs [small and
medium-sized enterprises] in Iran,” Roth said.
“Despite the innocuous-sounding title, there are several obvious points of
concern.” Noting that the agreements stemmed from a 2019 letter from Mohammad-Javad
Azari Jahromi, who is the Iranian minister of information and communications
technology.
“Jahromi is a key player in Iran’s brutal war against dissident voices and plays
a key role in repression and censorship…Jahromi also served seven years, from
2002 to 2009, in Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, one of the most brutal
agencies under the regime and responsible for torture and execution of
journalists, ethnic and sexual minorities, and other dissident voices…and
despite all this (including being sanctioned by the U.S. for internet
censorship,) UNIDO sees fit to respond to − and indeed implement − this man’s
request,” Roth said.
Germany is Tehran’s most important European trade partner and has faced
accusations for decades about its lax policy of transferring military-applicable
technology to Iran’s regime leading some to express concern over Müller’s new
position.
When Fox News asked Müller about the project, a spokesman of the German
Development Ministry responded, “Supporting or financing a transfer of dual-use
technology to Iran is not intended by the project you mention, ‘Promoting and
Upscaling Innovative Small and Medium Enterprises in the Islamic Republic of
Iran.’ UNIDO does not have the financial means to pay for material investment
goods, for their transport, or to directly transfer technologies to beneficiary
countries.”
The spokesman added that “Its objective is to strengthen the entrepreneurial
ecosystem and the technical capacities of support services to civilian ICT-related
start-up and scale-up enterprises in Iran. These businesses include internet
service platforms that are comparable to companies such as Amazon or Uber in
other countries.”
With Müller in Merkel’s cabinet, the German government’s Federal Office for
Economic Affairs and Export Control green-lighted the transfer of dual-use
technology to the Tehran regime that was incorporated into Iranian-produced
chlorine-laced missiles that poisoned Syrians, including children, in 2018, as
Fox News reported.
A State Department spokesman didn’t answer a Fox News question on whether the
U.S. had made clear to Müller that UNIDO must stop agreements it has with Iran
and other outlaw regimes but did answer a question about a recent UNIDO/IAEA
(International Atomic Energy Agency) agreement signed in June. The U.S. is the
largest single donor to the atomic agency.
“We are aware of a technical cooperation agreement between the IAEA and UNIDO
which allows for information sharing and would refer you to the IAEA for further
questions on that agreement,” the spokesperson said while also noting the US is
not part of UNIDO and “therefore does not provide assessed funding.”
“The United States supports the IAEA’s important work in the areas of nuclear
safeguards, safety, security, and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and
maintains management controls to ensure U.S. funding advances these critical
priorities.”
When asked how Müller plans to address UNIDO’s deficiencies, his spokesman sent
Fox News a July 12 statement posted on the German Development Ministry’s
website. “The battle against COVID-19 and climate change demands a greater
commitment of industrialized countries toward developing countries. We need more
innovations and investments as well as global technologies and knowledge
transfer,” said Müller.
Despite several requests for comment a UNIDO spokesman did not respond to Fox
News queries as to the charges leveled against the agency. Fox News understands
that Müller will outline his plans for UNIDO during the final week of August, it
is far from clear if the Iranian projects will be cancelled.
*Benjamin Weinthal reports on human rights in the Middle East and is a fellow at
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @BenWeinthal.
FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on
national security and foreign policy.
The West has lost its virtue/We have abandoned the taboos that held us together
Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist and essayist./UnHerd/August 17/2021
A century ago, as the Great War raged, Oswald Spengler wrote that “Western
mankind, without exception, is under the influence of an immense optical
illusion.” The Decline of the West, Spengler’s grand, ambitious, poetic theory
of Western downfall — well underway, in his telling, by the time he began
writing — has had its followers, detractors and imitators ever since. It has
also, in recent years, had something of a renaissance.
Decline is in the air, mingling with the smoke of burning forests in Greece and
the shocking footage coming out of Afghanistan. Much of what Spengler wrote
about the West’s dissolution — which he predicted would make itself fully known
in the 21st century — has proven prescient, and he hadn’t even heard of climate
change or the Taliban. You would have to have a strong will — the kind which old
Oswald admired — to deny, as nations angrily fragment, the gulf stream stutters,
the supply chains choke up, that he might have been onto something.
But what is “the West”? It depends which tribe you ask. For a liberal, the West
is the “Enlightenment” and everything that followed — democracy, human rights,
individualism, and that dynamic duo, “science and reason”. For a conservative,
it might signal a set of cultural values: traditional attitudes to family life
and national identity, and probably broad support for free-market capitalism.
And for the kind of post-modern leftist who currently dominates the culture, the
West — assuming they concede it even exists — is largely a front for
colonialism, empire, racism and all the other horrors we hear about daily
through the official channels.
All of these things could be true at the same time, but each is also a fairly
recent development. The West is a lot older than liberalism, leftism,
conservatism or empire. It is at the same time a simpler, more ancient and
immensely more complex concoction than any of these could offer. It is the
result of the binding together of people and peoples across a continent, over
centuries of time, by a particular religious story.
“There has never been any unitary organisation of Western culture apart from
that of the Christian Church,” explained the medieval historian Christopher
Dawson in Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, written shortly after World
War Two. “Behind the ever-changing pattern of Western culture there was a living
faith which gave Europe a certain sense of spiritual community, in spite of all
the conflicts and divisions and social schisms that marked its history.”
“The West”, in other words, was born from the telling of one sacred story — a
garden, an apple, a fall, a redemption — which shaped every aspect of life: the
organisation of the working week; the cycle of annual feast and rest days; the
payment of taxes; the moral duties of individuals; the attitude to neighbours
and strangers; the obligations of charity; the structure of families; and most
of all, the wide picture of the universe — its structure and meaning, and our
place within it.
The West, in short, was Christendom. But Christendom died. If you live in the
West now, you are living among its ruins. Many of them are still beautiful —
intact cathedrals, Bach concertos — but they are ruins nonetheless. And when an
old culture built around a sacred order dies, there will be lasting upheaval at
every level of society, from the level of politics to the level of the soul. The
shape of everything — family, work, moral attitudes, the very existence of
morals at all, notions of good and evil, sexual mores, perspectives on
everything from money to rest to work to nature to the body to kin to duty — all
of it will be up for grabs. Welcome to 2021.
Forty years ago this year, the philosopher Alasdair Macintyre argued in his
classic work After Virtue that the notion of virtue itself would eventually
become inconceivable once the source it sprung from was removed. If human life
is regarded as having no higher meaning, he said, it will ultimately be
impossible to agree on what “virtue” means, or why it should mean anything.
Macintyre’s favoured teacher at the time was Aristotle, not Jesus, but his
critique of the Enlightenment and prediction of its ultimate failure was based
on a clearsighted understanding of the mythic vision of medieval Christendom —
and of the partial, empty and over-rational humanism with which Enlightenment
philosophers attempted to replace it. Macintyre believed that this failure was
already clearly evident, but that society did not see it, because the monuments
to the old sacred order were still standing, like Roman statues after the
legions had departed.
To illustrate his thesis, Macintyre used the example of the taboo. This word was
first recorded by Europeans in the journals of Captain Cook, in which he
recorded his visits to Polynesia. Macintyre explains:
“The English seamen had been astonished at what they took to be the lax sexual
habits of the Polynesians and were even more astonished to discover the sharp
contrast with the rigorous prohibition placed on such conduct as men and women
eating together. When they enquired why men and women were prohibited from
eating together, they were told that the practice was taboo. But when they
enquired further what taboo meant, they could get little further information.”
Further research suggested that the Polynesian islanders themselves were not
really sure why these prohibitions existed either; indeed, when taboos were
abolished entirely in parts of Polynesia a few decades later, there were few
immediately obvious consequences. So, were such prohibitions meaningless all
along?
Not quite. Macintyre reminds us that, at first, taboos “are embedded in a
context which confers intelligibility upon them”. But if they are deprived of
that context, “they at once are apt to appear as a set of arbitrary
prohibitions,” especially “when those background beliefs in the light of which
the taboo rules had originally been understood have not only been abandoned but
forgotten”. Once a society reaches the stage where the reason for its taboos has
been forgotten, one shove is all it takes to start a domino effect that will
knock them all down. Macintyre believed that this stage had already been reached
in the West.
When such an order is broken, what replaces it? When the taboos were abolished
in Polynesia, reported Macintyre, an unexpected “moral vacuum” was created,
which came to be filled by “the banalities of the New England Protestant
missionaries”. In this case, a certain colour of Christianity had stepped into
the breach created by the death of a previously sacred story. The end of the
taboos had not brought about some abstract “freedom”; rather, it had stripped
the culture of its heart. That heart had, in reality, stopped beating some time
before, but now that the formal architecture was gone too, there was an empty
space waiting to be filled — and nature abhors a vacuum.
It seems to me that we are now at this point in much of the West. Since at least
the 1960s, our empty taboos have been crumbling away, and in just the last few
years many of the remaining monuments have been — often literally — torn down.
Christendom expired over centuries for a complex set of reasons, but it was not
killed off by an external enemy. No hostile army swept into Europe and forcibly
converted us to a rival faith. Instead we dismantled our story from within. What
replaced it was not a new sacred order, but a denial that such a thing existed
at all.
In After Virtue, Macintyre explains what happened next. The Enlightenment
project of the 18th century was an attempt to build a “morality” (a word that
had not existed in this sense before that time) loosed from theology. It was the
project of constructing a wholly new human being After God, in which a new,
personal moral sense — no longer eternal in nature, or accountable to any higher
force — would form the basis of the culture and the individual.
Did it work? In a word: no. Post-Enlightenment “morality”, said Macintyre, was
no substitute for a higher purpose or meta-human sense of meaning. If the
correct path for society or the individual was based on nothing more than an
individual’s personal judgement, then who or what was to be the final arbiter?
Ultimately, without that higher purpose to bind it, society would fall — as it
has — into “emotivism”, relativism and ultimately disintegration. If every
culture is cored around a sacred order — whether Christian, Islamic or Hindu,
the veneration of ancestors or the worship of Odin — then the collapse of that
order will lead inevitably to the collapse of the culture it supported. There is
a throne at the heart of every culture, and whoever sits on it will be the force
we take our instruction from. The modern experiment has been the act of
dethroning both literal human sovereigns and the representative of the sacred
order, and replacing them with purely human, and purely abstract, notions — “the
people” or “liberty” or “democracy” or “progress.”
I’m all for democracy (the real thing, please, not the corporate simulacra that
currently squats in its place), but the dethroning of the sovereign — Christ —
who sat at the heart of the Western sacred order did not lead to universal
equality and justice. It led — via a bloody shortcut through Robespierre, Stalin
and Hitler — to the complete triumph of the power of money, which has splintered
our culture and our souls into a million angry shards.
The vacuum created by the collapse of our old taboos was filled by the poison
gas of consumer capitalism. It has now infiltrated every aspect of our lives in
the way that the Christian story once did, so much so that we barely even notice
as it colonises everything — from the way we eat to the values we teach our
children. Cut loose in a post-modern present — with no centre, no truth and no
direction — we have not become independent-minded, responsible, democratic
citizens in a human republic. We have become slaves to the self and to the power
of money; broken worshippers before the monstrous idol of Progress. “In the
ethics of the West,” wrote Spengler, “everything is direction, claim to power,
will to affect the distant.”
After Virtue ends with its author declaring that the task we face today is
similar to that set for those living through the collapse of Rome: not to “shore
up the imperium” but to start building anew. Macintyre famously concluded that
the West was waiting for “a new — and doubtless very different — St Benedict.”
That was forty years ago, and we are still waiting, but it’s not a bad way to
see the challenge we face. Despite the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan, the
post-Christian West is not at all short on ideas, arguments, insults,
ideologies, stratagems, conflicts or world-saving machines. But it is very short
on saints; and how we need their love, wisdom, discipline and stillness amidst
the chaos of the times. Maybe we had better start looking at how to embody a
little of these qualities ourselves.
*A longer version of this essay was originally published at The Abbey of
Misrule.
From Idlib to Gaza: Where is Taliban victory celebrated? -
analysis
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/August 17/2021
There are also militant or terrorist and extremist groups that either have ties
to the Taliban or see in them a kinship and inspiration for global far-right
religious extremist victories.
While some have been transfixed by the grief and tragedy facing Afghans trying
to flee the Taliban in Kabul, some have been celebrating the victory. There are
two types of people celebrating. There are countries that quietly worked with
the Taliban to remove the US from Afghanistan. These include Russia, China,
Iran, Pakistan, and likely Qatar and Turkey as well.
There are also militant or terrorist and extremist groups that either have ties
to the Taliban or see in them a kinship and inspiration for global far-right
religious extremist victories over the West.
Included among those celebrating are people linked to Hamas and extremist groups
in Idlib that are linked to Turkey. According to numerous reports online candies
and sweets were distributed in Idlib in northwest Syria, an area dominated by
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. HTS is a descendant of the Syrian equivalent of al-Qaeda.
Latest articles from Jpost
Afghanistan: 'America will pay a price for years to come,' say experts
However, in recent years it tried to work more closely with Turkey and also the
United States. Several US officials under the Trump administration thought it
could be an asset against the Iranian and Russian-backed Syrian regime.
This was Cold War thinking: Use the jihadists against the Russians, use the
Sunnis against the Shi’ites.
Nevertheless, there was quiet outreach. There was also one problem: the US sees
HTS as a terrorist group, and now the Biden administration has also sanctioned
Turkish-backed Ahrar al-Sharqiya, another extremist group.
This presents an embarrassing question for US policy-makers who still see Ankara
and its ruling AKP party as an ally. Ankara has backed Hamas. Ankara has also
backed extremists in Syria who support the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the US has been working in Syria with the Syrian Democratic Forces
and the US is not only a close ally of Israel but also works with the
Palestinian Authority Security Forces, against Hamas.
There is an inherent contradiction between backing both sides, and working with
those who back the Taliban, while also fighting the Taliban. But this
contradiction often underpins US policy, as when the US works with Pakistan,
whose intelligence service helped create and back the Taliban. Be that as it
may, what matters is that these groups see the Taliban victory as helpful to
their own cause. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has congratulated the Taliban for
ending the US “occupation” in Afghanistan. Clearly, he is also talking about the
Israeli “occupation” and the idea that similar Taliban-like steadfastness will
prevail over Israel.
There was even a phone call between Haniyeh and Taliban leader Abdul-Ghani
Baradar on Monday. According to Turkish media, “Haniyeh said the end of the US
occupation of Afghanistan ‘is a prelude to the demise of all occupation forces,
foremost of which is the Israeli occupation of Palestine’, according to the
website of Hamas.”
Clearly, Turkey’s media is watching this relationship closely. It wonders
whether the renewed rise of the Taliban might fuel other Muslim
Brotherhood-linked groups, from Idlib to Gaza, Egypt and the Sahel, and beyond.
That is a big question. Will global “jihadist” movements now see more support
and a new surge? These groups are now in their third generation of global
extremism.
This began in the period before the 1980s and then gained steam in the 1980s
with a new generation in the 1990s with the rise of Al Qaeda and the belief that
these extremist groups could play a role in wars from Algeria to Egypt, from
Chechnya to Bosnia, and all the way to the Caucasus and Philippines. But most of
these groups have been pushed back.
The third generation of extremists came to support ISIS. So will a new
generation really be inspired by the Taliban, Hamas, HTS, and other groups? This
remains to be seen.
Muslim Perseverance vs Western Myopia: The Real Lesson of Afghanistan
Raymond Ibrahim/August 17/2021
In an interview conducted back in 2005, al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri was asked
about the statuses of Osama bin Laden, then leader of al-Qaeda, and Mullah Omar,
then leader of the Taliban—the two men most implicated for the September 11,
2001 terror strikes on the U.S. (bin Laden for masterminding it, Omar for
providing him with logistical aid and sanctuary).
It had been four years since the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan, toppled the
Taliban, and sent jihadists of all stripes running; and there had not been a
peep from either the leader of al-Qaeda or the leader of the Taliban for quite
some time.
Al-Zawahiri’s response, which I translated for inclusion in The Al Qaeda Reader
(2007), has always stayed with me. He said:
Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is
a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth
and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may
Allah protect them from all evil—are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey
of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam]
transcends time (p.182, emphasis added).
Consider the applicability—if not the prophetic nature—of this response in light
of recent developments: twenty years ago, the U.S.A.—the world’s only
superpower—invaded Afghanistan, one of the world’s weakest and poorest nations;
it made quick work of its enemies and set shop, nation building and importing
“democracy”; and it eventually eliminated its archenemies, Osama bin Laden and
Mullah Omar.
To any casual Western observer, it was an unqualified and resounding U.S.
victory.
And yet…. and yet, two decades, trillions of U.S. dollars, and thousands of
American servicemen’s lives later, not only does the U.S. not having anything to
show for it, Afghanistan is set to become a much larger threat than ever before
(not least as the Taliban—a “radical Muslim” group that has just founded the
“Islamic emirate” of Afghanistan—seized billions’ worth of American weapons and
equipment).
So what went wrong? Perhaps the following dichotomy—or rather dictum—may help:
Whereas Muslims take a long, patient view of history, Westerners take a very
short, myopic view; whereas Muslims maintain their ways and bide their time in
moments of defeat (“we may be down but—so long as we’re not out—we’re still in
the game”), Westerners allot too much significance to the temporal—to specific
achievements or markers in time and space.
Take a concrete example—the wild euphoria that took the media by storm after the
death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Then, CNN security analyst Peter Bergen
declared that “Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just
sort of announce that right now.” Insisting that the “iconic nature of bin
Laden’s persona” cannot be replaced, Bergen further counseled that “It’s time to
move on.”
Another CNN analyst, Fareed Zakaria, assured us that “this is a huge,
devastating blow to al-Qaeda, which had already been crippled by the Arab
Spring. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the end of al-Qaeda in any
meaningful sense of the word.”
And yet … and yet, a full decade after bin Laden’s death, not only is his
original safe haven, a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, back in action, but so too is
al-Qaeda.
Why? Again, to quote that terrorist organization’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri:
“Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden … are merely two soldiers of
Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and
Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time.”
Kill this or that jihadist; conquer this or that Muslim nation; prop up this or
that government and import this or that Western ideology or style of
governance—so long as Islam is alive and well, so too will the “journey of
jihad” continue, even if as an imperceptible pulse under the surface, revealing
itself only when the time is right.
That you can always bet on.
شارل الياس شرتوني/انسحاب الولايات المتحدة من أفغانستان .. مراوغات وآفاق
The US Withdrawal from Afghanistan, Equivocations and Prospects
Charles Elias Chartouni/August 17/2021
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/101482/%d8%b4%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%b3-%d8%b4%d8%b1%d8%aa%d9%88%d9%86%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%b3%d8%ad%d8%a7%d8%a8-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%88%d9%84%d8%a7%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85/
The withdrawals from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, have been paramount on the US
and EU Foreign Policy priorities and were completed gradually and at cascading
intervals since 2014, but they were permanently marred by equivocations,
uncertainties and mostly dubious outcomes: neither stabilization nor the
prospects of Nation-Building have come to fruition, in spite of the gigantic
investments, the costly military interventions and the the occupation time. The
emblematic scenery of the Kabul Airport reported yesterday by the media, is
quite illustrative of the enduring inability of these imploded geopolitics to
overcome their systemic entropies, build institutions, engage modernity and
achieve the least consensus on whichever national or public policy matters. The
succeeding US administrations have respectively attempted, to no avail, at
upholding their withdrawal pledges at subsequent stages, whereas their
coalitions have subsided throughout the last decade. The Biden decision is of no
surprise and comes at the heels of the US negotiations with the Taliban
initiated under the Trump administration, however what is surprising is the
abrupt, clumsy, ill sequenced transition and its imponderables.
The systematic review of the unfolding events yields the following observations:
1/ the Taliban’s conduct establishes the evidence of their blatant violation of
the agreed upon withdrawal stipulations; 2/ the US separate negotiations with
the Taliban and the sidelining of the central government in Kabul has weakened
its stature, reprenstativeness, and entitlement to adjudicate national
conflicts; 3/ the central government has failed to build its moral, legal and
operational autonomy, validate its credentials all along, and generate steady
supportive constituencies amongst a strong and dynamic budding civil society; 4/
Taliban are going to be confronted with the new realities of an Afghan civil
society that is unlikely to be cowed through State terrorism, and empowered
feminine constituencies that will resist their relegation to moral subordination
and professional marginality; 5/ the false assumptions about a new moderate
version of the Taliban have been quickly dispelled, since their Islamic
extremism, cooperation with al Qaida and its ilk are already in display, and the
transformation of Afghanistan into a rehabilitated platform of Islamist
terrorism is under way; 6/ the comeback of the Taliban is inevitably going to
resuscitate the lingering geopolitical contentions of the Indian subcontinent,
and their major strategic and security hazards (conventional and nuclear) on the
crossroads between the different South Asian’s interfaces, the Larger Middle
East and the European limes; 7/ NATO and Western democracies have to overcome
their ideological blindspots, review their security paradigms, recast their
strategic alliances, and start acting on comprehensive geopolitical arrangements
and containment scenarios, which put an end to the widening strategic voids in
regions swayed by endemic under-development, ethno-political conflicts, Fragile
State structures, competing primordial loyalties, Islamic extremism, and
pliabilty to jostling power politics.
The plodding transition should give way to the featured orderly political
transition, the confrontation of the Taliban on the very basis of their
willingness to abide by the rules of international civility, Human Rights
standards, readiness to disassociate themselves from al Qaida and its extremist
ilks, and build an effective governance. Short of these minimal conditions, the
Taliban return to power ushers a new era of geopolitical instability,
international terrorism, and the perpetuation of Islamism as the prevailing doxa
of the contemporary Islamic religious discourse and its modulations. The
defensive posture of President Biden was quite reminiscent of domestic score
settling, normative discrepancies between ethical imperatives and Realpolitik
mandates, and the ensuing inconsistencies between policy planning and
implementation and their backlashing effects on the current administration.
Whatever might have been the considerations, it should have proceeded more
carefully with its withdrawal plan, and reckoned with the pitfalls of
negotiations with a terrorist organization operating on the interstices of
clashing cultures, tattered and vast geopolitical wastelands, fragile statehood,
and the jarring semantics of contemporary Islam.
من بايدن إلى الطالبان مع الحب: بوراك بوكديل/معهد كايتستون
From Biden to the Taliban with Love
Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/August 17/2021
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/101485/%d9%85%d9%86-%d8%a8%d8%a7%d9%8a%d8%af%d9%86-%d8%a5%d9%84%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b7%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%a7%d9%86-%d9%85%d8%b9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%a8-%d8%a8%d9%88%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%83-%d8%a8%d9%88%d9%83/
Afghans are facing possibly the world's most brutal army of radical Muslims, now
installed in Kabul, and armed with what US President Joe Biden said were "all
the tools... and equipment of any modern military. We provided advanced
weaponry," which the Taliban has captured from the disintegrating Afghan
National Army.
Biden has, in fact, bestowed "advanced weaponry," courtesy of US taxpayers, not
only on the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS, but also on Russia, China and Iran, who
will doubtless now reverse-engineer the abandoned materiel.
The Afghans have good reasons to flee their own country by the millions. Iran is
their typical first stop.
Once in Iran, they are given easy and safe passage to Turkey -- that is Iran's
gift to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkey is already home to nearly five
million migrants. The arrival, over years, of another five million would
paralyze Turkey, its economy, politics and relative safety. But Afghan migrants
will not be only Turkey's problem.
In 2020, Erdoğan threatened to flood EU countries with millions of Syrians....
The real number was just a couple of thousand. Erdoğan's bluff had failed. Since
then, he has not tried another Turkish government-sponsored migrant dump onto
Greek territory.
If the Greek and EU border agencies do not want to relive the 2015 migrant
crisis, they should review their blueprints to protect Greek territory from
migrants and get ready for another inflow this year.
Afghans are facing possibly the world's most brutal army of radical Muslims,
armed with what US President Joe Biden said were "all the tools... and equipment
of any modern military. We provided advanced weaponry," which the Taliban has
captured from the disintegrating Afghan National Army. Biden has, in fact,
bestowed "advanced weaponry," courtesy of US taxpayers, not only on the Taliban,
Al-Qaeda and ISIS, but also on Russia, China and Iran, who will doubtless now
reverse-engineer the abandoned materiel. Pictured: Taliban fighters stand on a
US-supplied Humvee military vehicle that they captured in Herat, Afghanistan on
August 13, 2021.
Locals in Istanbul were recently shocked to see hordes of young Afghan men in
worn out uniforms, strolling aimlessly down neighborhoods that were already home
to thousands of Syrian refugees. Later, Turkish police detained and expelled
nine of the men. Hundreds of others are communicating with their relatives and
friends in Afghanistan and Iran and most likely updating them on the illegal
migration routes into Turkey -- Afghans would typically pay smugglers $1,000 for
the trip from Kabul to Van in eastern Turkey. With the victory of the Taliban
and the collapse of the Afghan government, hundreds of thousands may be crossing
via Iran into eastern Turkey, finally seeking the least dangerous (and least
costly) route into European Union soil.
After the United States fully pulls out of Afghanistan, Turkey's border with
Iran will be packed with people trying to get into Turkey. But once in Turkey,
there is no clear path to establishing legal status and no organizations at all
to support families in need of food and shelter. The United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) no longer processes asylum claims in Turkey,
and claims through government offices can take years.
Turkey is facing this new wave of illegal immigrants when it is already hosting
3.6 million registered Syrian migrants, already 4.37% of Turkey's total
population. Today, more than a million Syrian children, aged 5-17, or 63% of
total, are attending Turkish schools. In the past three years, 120,000 Syrians
became Turkish citizens. They own shops, run businesses and live in
predominantly Syrian ghettos in Ankara and Istanbul.
In three Turkish provinces (Gaziantep, Hatay and Şanlıurfa) Syrians account for
more than 20% of the population. In the Turkish province of Kilis, they make up
74.3% of the population.
Turks, with a poor per capita income of $8,000, are already weary of cheap,
illegal Syrian workers taking their jobs. Now that the Afghan migrant threat is
so visible on Turkish streets, Turks are discovering the virtues of a fresh
surge of nativism. There are already signs that this nativism can turn violent.
On August 12, police in Ankara detained 76 people in connection with attacks on
homes and businesses believed to be owned by Syrians, after a Turkish teenager
was killed in a fight with a group of migrants from Syria. A mob,
hundreds-strong, took to the streets of the Altındağ neighborhood. They were
throwing stones at Syrian migrants' homes, ransacking some shops and chanting
anti-Syrian slogans. The scene looked like a Muslim-on-Muslim pogrom.
The first 10 years of Syria's civil war created 6.5 million asylum-seeking
migrants from a population of 22 million. Afghanistan's population is 75% larger
than Syria's at the start of its war. And Afghans are facing possibly the
world's most brutal army of radical Muslims, now installed in Kabul, and armed
with what US President Joe Biden said were "all the tools... and equipment of
any modern military. We provided advanced weaponry," which the Taliban has
captured from the disintegrating Afghan National Army.
Biden has, in fact, bestowed "advanced weaponry," courtesy of US taxpayers, not
only on the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS, but also on Russia, China and Iran, who
will doubtless now reverse-engineer the abandoned materiel.
Afghans have good reasons to flee their country by the millions. Iran is their
typical first stop.
Once in Iran, they are given easy and safe passage to Turkey -- that is Iran's
gift to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkey is already home to nearly five
million migrants. The arrival, over years, of another five million would
paralyze Turkey, its economy, politics and relative safety. But Afghan migrants
will not be only Turkey's problem.
At the peak of the Syrian crisis, 1.3 million Syrians requested asylum in
Europe. By nationality, in 2015, they were the biggest group among migrants of
different nationalities arriving from Turkey into Greek territory. Five years
later, Afghans have taken the lead. And this is before the biggest Afghan wave
has even started.
In 2020, Erdoğan threatened to flood EU countries with millions of Syrians. His
government transported thousands of Syrians to Turkey's border with Greece in
Thrace, opened the gates and pushed them into the no man's land. Within the
first week, the Turkish government claimed, nearly 200,000 Syrians had entered
Greece. The real number was just a couple of thousand. Erdoğan's bluff had
failed. Since then, he has not tried another Turkish government-sponsored
migrant dump onto Greek territory.
All the same, if the Greek and EU border agencies do not want to relive the 2015
migrant crisis, they should review their blueprints to protect Greek territory
from migrants and get ready for another inflow this year.
**Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, was recently fired from the
country's most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is
taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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