Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: per Hezbollah si mette male in Libano

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0415/p06s21-wome.html
In Lebanon's wild east, Hezbollah finds itself on left foot
After supporting an Army crackdown against lawlessness in the Bekaa
Valley, the Shiite organization faces a backlash from angry clan
members ahead of June elections.
By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
The death of a noted drug dealer and the revenge killing of four
soldiers have plunged the Lebanese Army into a confrontation with the
powerful Shiite clans that rule Lebanon's wild northern Bekaa Valley.
Hundreds of Lebanese special forces backed by helicopters deployed
this week into the northern Bekaa, raiding homes and encircling
villages in a manhunt for a gang suspected of carrying out an attack
on Monday against an Army patrol that left four soldiers dead.
But the clash between the Army and clans in the Bekaa, a Hezbollah
stronghold, has placed the powerful Shiite organization in an awkward
position.
Long loathe to tangle with the clans from which it derives much grass-
roots support, the organization had turned a blind eye to their
criminality for years. But when a car thief struck one of its own,
Hezbollah signalled its consent to the Army to crack down. Now, some
angry clan members are vowing to vote against the Hezbollah-led
opposition in June 7 parliamentary elections, shaping up to be the
closest in decades.The tough and close-knit Shiite clans have long
held sway in the remote arid plain of the northern Bekaa, an area
traditionally ignored by successive Lebanese governments. Some of them
earn huge profits from drug trafficking, hashish cultivation, car
theft, and counterfeiting.
In the impoverished village of Dar Al-Wasaa, tucked into rocky hills
on the western flank of the Bekaa Valley, a woman from the Jafaar
clan, one of the largest and most powerful tribes in the area,
explains why they rely on drugs for income.
"This area is extremely neglected by the government," says the middle-
aged woman, who declined to give her full name. "There is no way to
earn a living. What are we supposed to do? Eat rocks? There's nothing
for us to do but sell drugs."
Why Hezbollah's tolerance snapped
Although Hezbollah disapproves of drugs on moral and religious
grounds, it generally ignores the hashish cultivation and heroin
refining that takes place in the northern Bekaa.
And it has not been averse to exploiting narcotics as a weapon against
Israel. After Israel withdrew from an occupied strip of south Lebanon
in May 2000, Hezbollah coopted the existing cross-border drug
smuggling networks.
Drug dealers in south Lebanon smuggle hashish and heroin across the
border into Israel in exchange for cash for themselves and
intelligence information for Hezbollah. The Israeli authorities have
busted several drugs-for-intel spy rings in northern Israel in the
past few years. One of the largest was run by a lieutenant colonel in
the Israeli army who, ironically, lost an eye to a Hezbollah roadside
bomb while serving in south Lebanon in the 1990s.
But Hezbollah's tolerance of the criminality in the Bekaa snapped a
few months ago when thieves stole a car belonging to Jihad Mughniyah,
son of Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah's top military commander who was
assassinated last year in Damascus car bombing.
According to a source familiar with the incident, Mughniyah was
hunting with friends near Chaat village in the Bekaa when members of
the Zeaiter clan snatched his vehicle, apparently unimpressed that its
owner was the son of the legendary Mughniyah.
In response, Hezbollah quietly gave a green light to the Army to mount
a crackdown on the gangs of car thieves. But the army's round-up
expanded to include drug dealers and hashish farmers, infuriating the
clans, some of whom are vowing to vote against Hezbollah in the
upcoming election.
Army hits the road to Bekaa
On Monday, four soldiers were killed and 11 wounded near the Bekaa
town of Rayak in an ambush suspected to have been carried out by
members of the Jaafar clan. The attack was revenge for the killing
last month of Ali Abbas Jaafar, a drug dealer who had 172 outstanding
arrest warrants. Lebanese soldiers shot him in his car on a dirt track
outside Dar al-Wasaa.
Speaking Monday after the ambush against the soldiers, Interior
Minister Ziad Baroud said that the Army was a "red line" and vowed "to
strike with an iron fist" against the perpetrators.
The next day, the highway leading from Beirut to the Bekaa was clogged
with tank transporters carrying camouflaged armored personnel carriers
and trucks filled with red-bereted soldiers. Troops set up numerous
checkpoints on the roads leading to Dar al-Wasaa, while helicopters
clattered high above, keeping well out of the range of rocket-
propelled grenades carried by the fugitives.
Survivors of Army attack tell their story
The village was eerily quiet in the bright morning sunshine. The men
of Dar al-Wasaa had fled ahead of the approaching soldiers, grabbing
their weapons and disappearing into the rugged mountains, the
traditional refuge for the clans.
The Lebanese army claimed that Ali Abbas Jaafar had failed to stop at
a checkpoint, forcing the soldiers to open fire at his vehicle. Ali
Abbas and another member of the Jaafar family were killed.
But those in the vehicle who survived offer a different version,
insisting that the troops ambushed Ali Abbas and opened fire without
warning.
"We didn't see the soldiers or their vehicles. All we saw were bullets
coming from the trees, hitting the car and us," says Salwa Jaafar, who
had hitched a ride in Ali Abbas' car along with her four children. She
was wounded in the arm and in one lung. Her teenage son, Ahmad, was
hit in the back.
Salwa claimed that the soldiers beat them despite their wounds and it
took the intervention of armed members of the Jaafar clan before they
were allowed to go to hospital for treatment.
The incident has inflamed the Jaafars, arousing fierce instincts of
revenge and tribal solidarity.
"Yes, the Jaafars do kill, but only those that kill us," says a close
female relative of Salwa, her voice rising with anger. "The soldiers
who were killed deserve to be killed. I support the boys that did
this. Understand this: If they kill one of us, we kill one of them. If
I know where the men are who killed the soldiers I would go and kiss
their feet for what they have done."
---
Luca Logi e Pio XII: mutevoli simpatie
http://raionim.blogspot.com/2009/01/mutevoli-simpatie.html

 In Lebanon's wild east, Hezbollah finds itself on left foot
Buono.

-- 
Tb