Expected and undisturbed Hezbollah coup
By Olivier Guitta
Hezbollah has been rearming quite quickly- it has now close to 45,000 rockets, more than before the onset of the summer 2006 war with Israel- under the eyes of the helpless UNIFIL forces. For proof the March 30 incident when a missiles shipment coming from Syria was controlled at Jbal al Botm by an Italian battalion, part of the UNIFIL forces, and then authorized to continue to reach its final recipient: Hezbollah.
I just wrote on Hezbollah's coup for The Middle East Times. To read the whole article, please click here.
Here is an excerpt:
The Lebanese government last week tried to put a stop to Hezbollah's blatant takeover of the country. Authorities outlawed Hezbollah's illegal parallel telecom network and fired the airport's head of security, a Hezbollah ally who had authorized installations of spy cameras in order to monitor the movements of majority leaders.
Saying it amounted to a declaration of war, Hezbollah used its overpowering force to seize most of the Sunni areas of Beirut and shut down the airport and the majority-owned media.
Why is anyone surprised by these latest events?
The Arab league and Western diplomats seem to be speechless and several nations asked their citizens to leave the country. But the writing was on the wall. In December 2007 in an article entitled, "Hezbollah in Beirut's driver seat," published by the Middle East Times, I wrote that "unsurprisingly Hezbollah has been planning and implementing a secret coup for some time using a multi-pronged strategy."
What has been a surprise and a major disappointment for the Lebanese people is the decision of the army not to get involved in the fighting. While it is true that the army needs to remain neutral since it is composed of personnel from the various religious communities, it is no secret that Hezbollah has infiltrated it. The army was perceived as the only functioning part of the government, but the past few days have shown that this was just a bad assessment. Finally this should not have come as a major shocker since the chief of the army and only presidential candidate, Gen. Michel Suleiman, appears to be more and more taking orders from Damascus.