Word: bekaa
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When a gang of criminals ambushed and murdered four Lebanese soldiers on Monday in the Bekaa Valley, they might have expected a certain amount of impunity. The valley - which lies just over Lebanon's Mediterranean mountain range and runs along the border with Syria - has long been a center of lawlessness in a country famed for its volatility. The Lebanese government - weakened by sectarian squabbling, rampant corruption, and interference by foreign powers - usually turns a blind eye to much of the drug cultivation and weapons smuggling that goes on there. But this time, the Lebanese army hit back. This week...
However, this latest battle for the Bekaa will probably be inconclusive. Stronger nations than Lebanon have failed to win their own wars on drugs. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable example of some of the changes that have been taking place in Lebanon ever since a new batch of non-partisan technocratic leaders took power last spring. Chosen as temporary compromise candidates to solve a political crisis that was turning violent, they are nevertheless proving remarkably active in trying to change Lebanon's culture of lawlessness. Instead of choosing sides in the great questions that have torn apart Lebanon...
...TIME that Al-Saadi Nahed, a Saudi extremist and veteran of the insurgency in Iraq, has been appointed "emir" for al-Qaeda in Lebanon. Nahed, who, according to intelligence sources, arrived in Lebanon earlier this month, has replaced Fahd al-Mughamis, who was arrested last June in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley along with other members of his cell while plotting to carry out bombings. Last month, an indictment against Mughamis stated that he was al-Qaeda's coordinator for Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and that his cell had been trained by Esbat al-Ansar, a jihadist faction based...
...celebrates people like Jamal Hamieh, a down-to-earth but shrewd farmer from Taraya village. Protected by a private army drawn from the Hamieh clan, he hosted Mafia dons, Colombian drug lords and New York gangsters, and threw lavish parties for top Syrian military intelligence officers based in the Bekaa, plying them with whisky, women and thick wads of $100 bills. Hamieh received expensive presents in return from his grateful clients. One gift was a brand-new Porsche which Hamieh, unaware of the car's status value, blithely destroyed in a matter of days by driving it over rugged dirt...
...sell their products in the domestic market. Recreational drug use is on the rise in Lebanon. "The problem is that drugs are readily available and relatively cheap," says Brigitte Khoury, a clinical psychologist and professor at the American University of Beirut. A problem that will only worsen if the Bekaa farmers return to their old ways...