The Lebanese Army: Stabbed in the Back?
This is an in house translation... since media seems to be very slow... Channel : Al Manar (Lebanon) Program: Bayn Qawseen (Between Brackets) Anchor : Batul Ayyub Na’im Date : 21 May 2007 Time 22H00 Beirut Translated segment of program: Interview with former minister of information Michel Samahe Batul Ayyub. We are to have with us former Minister of Information Michel Samaha… Good evening Sir! Michel Samaha. Good evening… How are you? Batul Ayyub. Sir, what is happening in the north of Lebanon? Do you see that there is an attempt to trap the army? Do you see any failures on the part of any of the bodies responsible for the security of Lebanon? Michel Samaha. Tonight, it is our duty towards the Lebanese people and the homeland to be very up front. What happened today is a plan executed by part of the ruling elite with a cover from the Lebanese government in order to betray the Lebanese army and the Palestinian brothers and sisters in the refugee camps. Syria has no relation with this issue neither has anyone of the parties who internally embraced the army or the resistance in regards to the Israeli aggression of last summer. I would like to tell you the following story: Saturday evening, one of the security officials of the ministry of interior called television stations in order to use cameras after midnight to cover a raid in Tripoli. The cameras were taken. An introduction to the raid was staged. It was known to this particular security force that the raid was against a group of Fatah al Islam. The Lebanese army was not informed about this so that it could take the appropriate measures to be alert in its positioning around the refugee camps… and in additional security measures regarding the movements of its forces… or its personnel… of whom some were off duty and were walking home. They were betrayed… on their base and on the streets by militias who are supported by parties who know who they are… and who Seymour Hersh wrote about… and not from Lebanese sources. I would like to quote: Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said. In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh Michel Samaha. Let us say things as they are and be honest. Some people want to trap the army by removing it from the city… and moving it into the refugee camps… away from being able to protect daily life and keep civil security. Some people were unable to stem civil strife in Lebanon as per Elliot Abrams’ plan and start a civil war among Sunnis and Shias on one side… and Christians and Christians on the other. They thought of an operation that would draw the army into the refugee camps, igniting them all and therefore drawing the rest of the army out of the center of Lebanon where it operates to protect in times of trouble… thus drawing the whole country right into the state of civil strife that had been planned for it. We are facing a situation of practical treason in the country. We are forcing the country into a civil war. We are accusing those who stand with us of being enemies and we stretch out our hands to our enemies asking them to instigate civil strife in our country. These voices that came out yesterday on satellite stations marketing the notion that Fatah al Islam was Syria’s doing…, no… Fatah al Islam is a regime… It is this Lebanese security regime that is exposing us all to civil srtife.
