New System of Profiling at Lebanon’s Borders?
By David Schenker
Since the 2005 Cedar Revolution, Washington has obligated nearly $500 million in military and economic assistance to Lebanon. Much of this funding is going to the Lebanese Armed Forces and to the Internal Security Forces—none of it is going to the Surete General (SG), the General Security forces. It’s not difficult to see why.
Major General Wafik Jezzini, who is close to Hizballah, heads the SG, the agency responsible among other duties for issuing passports, surveilling the borders, and keeping an eye on foreign visitors and residents in Lebanon. (His predecessor, Jamil Al Sayed, was one of Syria’s top operatives in Lebanon from 1998-2005, when he was imprisoned in connection to the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri).
In the aftermath of the assassination of a top Hamas operative in Dubai last month, and the ongoing discovery of Israeli surveillance equipment and alleged spy networks in Southern Lebanon, this week the SG decided to get tough on border security. During a friendly interview with Hizballah’s Al Manar satellite television station yesterday, Jezzini rolled out a new plan to keep Lebanon free of Israeli infiltrators:
“We employ in our border centers distributed lists of names of Jewish families. When someone arrives in Lebanon with a foreign passport and his family name suggests that he is of Jewish origin, then the border center sends his information to the central information office at the General Security Directorate, which specifically takes responsibility for following this individual…”
So Lebanon—courtesy of Hizballah’s man in General Security—is now innovating new methods of profiling on the border. One wonders what this means for the Obama Administration’s Middle East NSC director, Daniel Shapiro, a frequent visitor in Beirut.
