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Lebanon: Christians fear backlash

Lebanon‘s Christian community is beginning to fear for its wellbeing amid signs that pro-democracy revolts could end up giving more power to less tolerant strands of Islam. "We saw what happened to the Christians in Iraq after Saddam (Hussein) was ousted: many of them fled the country and are now living as refugees in Lebanon and Syria," Bilal Haddad, a Christian banker who used to live in Syria, told dpa. In Tunisia, where the so-called Arab Spring was born, an Islamic party banned under the rule of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has won the country’s first free election.

In Egypt, Coptic Christians and Muslims have continued to engage in violent clashes well after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. And in Libya, victorious anti-Muammar Gaddafi rebels have announced their support for sharia law. "All this seems to confirm that early critics of the Arab Spring revolutions may have been correct – that the hated dictators that were deposed may not have been as bad as they seemed to be and that some minorities who lived under their rule were protected then more than now," Christian a
nalyst George Deeb told dpa. "From these outcomes, Christians in the Middle East are becoming increasingly fearful of the tremendous political and social change sweeping the region," Deeb said.

Christians in Lebanon, where they represent about 39 per cent of the population, and in neighboring Syria, have so far enjoyed a protected status. But given the growing influence of Islamic movements in post-revolutionary North Africa, they are now beginning to question where their loyalties should lay. The head of the Christian Maronite community, Patriarch Bishara Boutros Al-Rai, recently described Syria’s despotic president, Bashar Al-Assad, as an "open-minded" leader who should be given more time to implement reforms rather than be ousted because of his brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

He also expressed concern about "a transitional phase in Syria that might threaten the Christians of the Middle East". "Of course we are going to be afraid that extremists will come, because the entire region is boiling and we cannot bear any more fundamentalists," said Sana Maroun, a Christian living in Beirut. Former Lebanese president Amin Gemayel, himself a Christian, wants his country to introduce a new bill to ensure that Christians "no longer remain victims". The revolts should abide by certain principles to assure the people that they are keen on reaching democracy and freedom without threatening any other sect living in the same country, he said. – dpa

Lebanon: Christians fear backlash
Lebanon: Christians fear backlash

 

 

(Video) Syrian protesters face heightened security post Gaddafi

Fearing retaliation Syria’s Alawites rush in weapons

Small arms are increasingly in demand inside volatile Syria, particularly among the country’s Alawite minority, who fear they may face retaliation as the revolt against their co-religionist, President Bashar Al-Assad.

Most of the weapons are being smuggled in from Lebanon, once an end user of small arms during the country’s 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. Today, Lebanon is overflowing with automatic weapons, grenades and hunting rifles, all of which are in demand in neighboring Syria.

“The proliferation of arms is not new. What is new that that the arms smuggling is now going to Syria and not the other way around,” Fadi Abi Allam, a Beirut-based researcher on small arms market in the Middle East, told The Media Line.

He said the 330-kilometer (205-mile) border between Lebanon and Syria was rife with smuggling routes and difficult to patrol.

“There are lots of hills and valleys and mountains on both sides and people have relations on both sides of the border, so there is a good opportunity for moving arms from side to side,” said Allam, who is president of the Permanent Peace Movement, a conflict resolution organization.

Over the weekend, Lebanese troops nabbed a van transporting a cache of machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades into Syria. According to the state-run Lebanese National News Agency, the soldiers seized the truck on the Halba-Khraibeh highway about 140 kilometers north of Beirut. The driver, who managed to flee, was reported to have been from Wadi Khaled, a Lebanese border town where thousands of Syrians have fled the uprising against Al-Assad that broke out in March.

One anonymous Lebanese weapons dealer was quoted by the Daily Star in Beirut as saying the Syrians were “driving up prices.” He said that since the revolt began, the price of a used Kalashnikov assault rifle has risen from $800 to $1,500, a grenade from $5 to $10 and a rocket-propelled grenade from $70 to over $200 each. Even shotguns, usually smuggled in from Turkey, have jumped from $200 to $500, he said.

Syrian authorities have accused Lebanese groups allied with former Lebanese President Saad Hariri, a Sunni, of supporting the smuggling of weapons and cash to the opposition. Hariri denies the charges and analysts also said the flourishing arms market was due less to political intrigue against the Alawite-dominated regime than to a chance to make quick profits or procure weapons for self defense.

One sector reportedly arming itself is Alawite villagers, who want to protect themselves from possible reprisals from the majority Sunnis should their revolt succeed in toppling Al-Assad’s Alawite rule.

There are no statistics how many guns exist in private hands in Syria. But unlike Lebanon, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, the repressive regime in Damascus has allowed relatively few weapons circulating in the Syria. Syria has been a major conduit for arms transfers, mainly from Iran to Hizbullah in Lebanon. But this was always under the strictest supervision of Al-Assad’s regime.

“We have a lot of arms in Lebanon and they exist everywhere and with everybody. This is because of the many militias that existed during the civil war between 1975 and 1990. The government collected the heavy weapons, but not the small arms,” Allam said. 

“With the tensions rising, it is only logical that people are trying to protect themselves, particularly amid the weakening of the [Syrian] military,” Allam said. “It’s not just the Alawites, but the Sunnis and many others who are arming themselves.”

Syrian authorities have accused those revolting of using arms against government troops and say 1,100 troops have been killed in the violence. The United Nations has said the iron-fisted crackdown has killed over 3,000 people.

The Syrian army has deployed along the border with Lebanon, reportedly to prevent army deserters and Syrian refugees from fleeing into Lebanon. On Sunday, a large force swept through the village of Zabadani on the border, and Reuters said army defectors engaged in heavy firefights with government troops. At least 100 were reported arrested.

Reports from Lebanon said that military commanders had recently met with Syrian officers to beef up patrols along the border aimed at preventing arms trafficking. Hizbullah, a staunch ally of Al-Assad’s regime, has also reportedly begun boosting its presence along the border in the eastern Bekaa region to top arms smuggling.

Copyright © 2011 The Media Line. All Rights Reserved.


Fearing retaliation Syria’s Alawites rush in weapons

Fearing retaliation Syria’s Alawites rush in weapons

Saudi Arabia: Unrest in eastern province

Unrest in the eastern province, home to the kingdom’s 2 million-strong Shia minority and its most significant oilfields, is not new. Activists have long campaigned for equality and employment opportunities, though their demands are often painted as sectarian and treated as a security problem. Indeed, the latest unrest seems to have been sparked by the detention of two elderly men to pressure their fugitive sons to turn themselves in. The novelty this year has been the growth of an embryonic civil rights movement and a sense of empowerment created by the dramatic events elsewhere in the Arab world.

Abdul Aziz al-Saqr, chairman of the Gulf Research Centre, predicted an escalation of such incidents. Other analysts detect a strategy by Iran to make up for the weakening of its ally Syria, where Bashar al-Assad is crushing popular unrest. Al-Arabiyya, the Saudi-owned satellite TV channel, is alsopushing this explanation. But the scholar Madawi al-Rasheed commented: "The Saudis are doing what dictators everywhere always do – blaming trouble on outsiders."

Until recently the Saudis could claim to have successfully weathered the regional turbulence. The country has seen none of the mass protests that toppled the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia and spread to nearby Yemen as well as Bahrain. In March police opened fire to disperse protesters in Qatif, with the effect that a planned "day of rage" was a damp squib.

King Abdullah has combined repression with financial largesse, pledging to spend $36bn (£23bn) on social welfare and job-creation programmes.

Yet, Rasheed has commented, this has "failed to defuse widespread anger and frustration among Saudi young people especially: over crumbling urban infrastructure, unemployment, corruption and above all arbitrary detentions and abuse of human rights."

Saudi Arabia: Unrest in eastern province
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Saudi Arabia: Unrest in eastern province
Saudi Arabia: Unrest in eastern province

Riots in minority Shiite region of Saudi Arabia 

 

A Saudi Shiite village where protesters clashed with police was calm on Wednesday as a prominent cleric urged his followers to avoid the use of firearms and fingers of blame were pointed at Iran.

"The situation is calm now in the village" of Al-Awamiya in eastern Saudi Arabia, said Human Rights First Society head Ibrahim al-Mughaiteeb, after 14 people — including 11 policemen — were injured in rioting.

At a mosque in the village late on Tuesday, Sheikh Nimr Nimr, appealed on fellow Shiites "not to respond to bullets with bullets," according to the text of his sermon published online.

Saudi "authorities depend on bullets … and killing and imprisonment. We must depend on the roar of the word, on the words of justice," Nimr said following two days of clashes between Shiite protesters and security forces.

But Mughaiteeb said "this is the first time" that protesters had used firearms rather than stones and Molotov cocktails.

A video posted on YouTube dated October 4 showed a group of masked men clashing with police in one of the village’s streets as the sound of gunfire rang out.

Another video on the same website showed demonstrators chanting "Down with Mohammed bin Fahd," the governor of the Eastern Province and son of Saudi Arabia’s former ruler, the late King Fahd.

The interior ministry of the predominantly Sunni Muslim kingdom blamed the unrest on a "foreign country", in apparent reference to Shiite Iran across the Gulf.

Shiite activists in Arab states of the Gulf are regularly accused of links with their co-religionists in Iran.

"Iran is trying to export its problems to avenge what happened in Bahrain, and reduce pressures on Syria," Tehran’s Arab ally, said Anwar Eshki, director of the Saudi-based Middle East Institute for Strategic Studies.

VIA AFP

Riots in minority Shiite region of Saudi Arabia