Qana, again?

It is almost beyond belief that Israel’s military has once again, in its massively disproportionate assault against Lebanon, hit a large group of very vulnerable Lebanese civilians who had sought shelter at Qana.
The last time that happened was in the crucial war of 1996, which was the turning point that (four years later) led to Israel’s unilateral (and ignominious) withdrawal from Lebanon.
I believe that Ehud Olmert, an untested leader eager to show his military “mettle”, ordered the present drastic over-reaction to a (relatively small) Hizbullah provocation as a way to demonstrate to his people that he is not “soft” on the Arabs. Also, to try to turn the tide of politics in Lebanon decisively against Hizbullah. It seems he had understood nothing of what occurred in the battle of 1996, and is still determined– at huge and quite unacceptable cost to Lebanon– to repeat almost all the same grisly strategic mistakes that Israel (when the militarily untested Shimon Peres was PM) made that year.
Just as the assault ordered by Peres in 1996 turned out to be a strategic defeat for Israel, so too does Israel’s present action in Lebanon appear to be turning out the same way.
In Haaretz today, veteran israeli strategic analyst Zeev Schiff writes (and sorry, no link) that Condi Rice,

    needs military cards, and unfortunately Israel has not succeeded to date in providing her with any. Besides bringing Hezbollah and Lebanon under fire, all of Israel’s military cards at this stage are in the form of two Lebanese villages near the border that have been captured by the IDF.
    If the military cards Israel is holding do not improve with the continuation of the fighting, it will result in a diplomatic solution that will leave the Hezbollah rocket arsenal in southern Lebanon in its place. The diplomatic solution will necessarily be a reflection of the military realities on the ground.

I find these words interesting from a number of perspectives. First, Schiff is admitting that– for all the destruction Israel has rained on the Lebanese citizenry over the past 17 days– still, they have been able to take and hold only two Lebanese villages. (I note that he seems to measure “military cards” almost wholly in terms of facts established on the ground, an analytical judgment that I agree with.)
Second, he seems clearly to be urging the Israeli military command to establish more “facts on the ground” than they already have.
Third, he is writing from the clear premise that there is close coordination between the Bush administration’s diplomacy and Israel’s military actions. In one sense, we all know this to be true at this point. The Bushites have clearly been holding up the attempts to get a ceasefire as a way of giving the Israeli assault more time to continue. But Schiff is saying something a little different from this. He is saying not so much that American diplomacy has been buttressing Israel’s military interests as that Israel’s assault has been serving the Bushites’ broader diplomatic interests (even if, from his perspective, they have not yet done so enough.)
Schiff is a very smart and well-informed person, but on occasion he acts a bit as a mouthpiece for the Israeli military’s propaganda. Is the Israeli military now trying to tell the world that they have been doing everything they’ve been doing over the past 17 days as a “service” to the Bush administration?
Anyway, as I’ve written before, for every day this fighting continues, the death and suffering will continue. In Qana, elsewhere in Lebanon and Palestine, and in Israel (though on a far smaller scale). The idea that all this suffering does anything to “serve” the interests of the US citizenry is outrageous.

    (I’m enroute back to the US, currently overnighting in London. This slaughter in Qana, once again, is deeply disturbing. I’m still trying to get my head around it. I do know that Shimon Peres and his commanders were never ever held accountable for the Qana slaughter of 1996. I interviewed him in 1998 and asked him about it. He tried to blow off all responsibility for it, saying something to the effect that “We told the Lebanese to leave south Lebanon on that occasion so everything we did after that was quite legal and okay.” They’ve used this “warning people to leave their homes” PR maneuver again this time. It does not exculpate the Israeli commanders and leaders one iota and certainly provides no excuse under international law for their actions. It’s an outrage: people– including vulnerable young families, elders, and the sick, should be ordered away from their homes on the whim of a foreign military? And then, how on earth are they supposed to leave in safety if no safe access is afforded them? The whole argument is deeply manipulative and dishonest.)

Arab-Israeli peacemaking: comprehensive or not?

The International Crisis Group came out Tuesday with a report on the Israel-Lebanon and Israel-Palestine crises. It concluded with four recommendations, of which the first one is:

    First, the Gaza and Lebanon crises need to be dealt with separately. Though related both chronologically and in terms of the sparks that triggered them, the reasons behind Hamas’s action have little to do with those motivating Hizbollah’s. Bundling them together only complicates efforts at resolution.

I disagree strongly with this. Since the beginning of the Israel-Lebanon crisis I have urged that this regionally explosive situation can be successfully addressed only if an urgent, authoritative international (UNSC) effort is launched to rapidly find a final resolution to all dimensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This means peacemaking to finally resolve the Palestine-Israel, Syria-Israel, and Lebanon-Israel disputes.
This is do-able, since everybody involved (except a small handful of Jewish-extremist and Arab-extremist diehards) basically knows, understands, and accepts what a sustainable final diplomatic outcome would look like.
And given the continuing, unacceptable loss of human life and the extreme precariousness of the current political/strategic situation throughout the whole region, finding a final, comprehensive resolution to the Israeli-Arab conflict is now more urgent and necessary than ever.
The Crisis group’s report urges (as the other three of its four recommendations) that:

    Secondly, resolution of the Palestinian crisis should rest on a simple equation: governance in exchange for a cessation of hostilities…
    Thirdly, an immediate Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire is necessary: pursuing a military knockout is unrealistic and counterproductive….
    Fourthly, to be sustainable, the ceasefire needs to be urgently followed by intensive diplomatic efforts to tackle root causes – all of them…

I note that points 2 and 3 there only call for partial, interim measures. (I would, however, have put: “securing an immediate ceasefire on all fronts” as Number 1 on any list, not number 3.)
Under four, the report urges these actions:

    * resumption of an urgent internal Lebanese dialogue on full implementation of the 1989 Taif Accords and Resolution 1559 items;
    * swift return of displaced persons to the South as prolongation of the current untenable situation risks producing an internal explosion;
    * urgent donor and especially Arab commitments to help with Lebanon’s reconstruction;
    * resolution of pending Israeli-Lebanese issues so as to dry up the complaints that feed Hizbollah’s militancy;
    * engaging Syria and Iran as a means of inducing Hizbollah cooperation; and
    * reinvigorating the whole Israeli-Arab peace process.
    [The rport continues:] This last point is key. The accelerated plunge into the abyss is the price paid for six years of diplomatic neglect; without a negotiating process, regional actors have been left without rules of the game, reference points or arbiters. In this respect, although their dynamics are different and they need separate solutions, the Palestinian and Lebanese crises clearly intersect. Only through a serious and credible rekindling of the long dormant peace process can there be any hope whatsoever of addressing, and eliminating, root causes.

Their mentioning– even if only in “fourth” place– of the need for a broad Arab-israeli peacemaking effort is welcome. But the actual approach that they urge is very different (and much more segmented and incremental) than what I think is necessary. Surely, what’s needed is a full-press effort to convene an authoritative and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace conference. The populations of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Israel have suffered for far too long from the international community’s failure to help them resolve this dispute.
I totally do not understand the reasoning behind the stress the Crisis Group has put on trying to “deal with” the Lebanon and Gaza crises “separately” in the short term, and to deal with Arab-Israeli peacemaking in such a segmented way thereafter. It looks suspiciously like a continuation of the international community’s (read, the US’s) very shopworn and harmful old policy of trying to play divide and rule among the Arabs…

Condi takes ownership of the assault on Lebanon

Clearsighted WaPo columnist Eugene Robinson was quite right to note in this piece yesterday the significance of the arrogant, belligerant rhetoric that US Secretary of State Condi Rice has been using regarding Israel’s thunderous, extremely lethal assault against Lebanon.
“We will prevail” – indeed!
Do political pronouncements get get any more belligerent, partisan, and childishly chest-thumping than that? (As a US citizen, I wholeheartedly dissociate myself from that “we.”)
Robinson, who is African-American, writes of Rice:

    her boss remains convinced that grand gestures change everything — witness how the Iraq invasion and occupation have persuaded Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to bring out their guitars and join in chorus after chorus of “Kumbaya.” [Irony alert for him there, I am sure]
    Does Rice envision that in her “new” Middle East, Palestinians will somehow develop amnesia and forget their aspirations for a viable independent state? Does she believe the autocrats in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere will allow free and fair elections — and that voters will reject the militant faith-based factions that for years have been providing needed services that corrupt governments can’t be bothered with? Does she think anyone is going to see the uncontrollable Frankenstein’s monster we created in Iraq as a model to emulate?
    … Other stalwarts of the Bush administration’s grandiose schemes seem exhausted — Rumsfeld is more philosopher than conqueror when he talks about Iraq these days, while Cheney bizarrely sticks with the story that everything’s just fine. But Rice’s life story — little black girl from Birmingham rises to become secretary of state, somehow becoming a hawkish Republican along the way — and her obvious potential in politics still make her an intriguing figure. I personally know three people who are writing books about her.
    Now, in her first real test as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice will be judged on more than her impressive résumé, her obvious intelligence, her poise on the world stage and her fashion sense. Now she has her own war to sort out, and all she’s done so far is scare people with her talk of somehow making the world’s tinderbox into something “new.”
    She should remember the famous dictum from philosopher Rumsfeld, which I paraphrase: You go to war with the Middle East you have, not the Middle East you might want.

There is also a huge further issue to be explored here, of course. And that is: After the extreme partisanship, belligerency, and just plain callousness toward humane and humanitarian concerns that have been displayed in all of the pronouncements from Condi and her boss, to what degree can the US government hope to gain the world’s support for the idea that it should have any kind of “special” role at all– let alone the “monopoly” role that it has long enjoyed, or even any kind of a “leading” role– in the in Arab-Israeli-peace diplomacy that very evidently must follow this crisis?
I would say, very little. The longer the fighting continues, and the longer Bush and Rice continue with their partisanship in it, the more the US’s position in the world will erode. Much, much faster than it would have done otherwise. What sad, blind, and deeply uninformed, unthinking “leaders” they are.

Historical and moral clarity from Prof. Ze’ev Ma’oz

I know that in blogosphere terms I’m wildly out-of-date to draw attention at this point to this article, published on July 25 by Prof. Ze’ev Maoz. But it is an important beacon of moral clarity in an Israel that seems largely to have become wrapped up in an aura of extreme self-righteousness that has clouded it (and much of the current US political leadership, too) from being able truly to see and care about the intrinsic worth of every single human person, including those who happen not to be Jewish or Israeli.
Maoz’s article is even more important because from 1994 through 1997 he was the head of Tel Aviv University ‘s very prestigious and professional “Jaffee Center for Security Studies”. He really is someone who knows whereof he writes concerning the nature of warfare.
Maoz writes:

    There’s practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.
    This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without distinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose sole purpose is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice are on Hezbollah’s side. Most certainly not. But the fact that Hezbollah “started it” when it kidnapped soldiers from across an international border does not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward our side.
    Let’s start with a few facts…

He then reviews the history of Israel’s (extremely harmful) military assaults on and in Lebanon since 1982. He continues:

    So much for the history of morality. Now, let’s consider current affairs. What exactly is the difference between launching Katyushas into civilian population centers in Israel and the Israel Air Force bombing population centers in south Beirut, Tyre, Sidon and Tripoli? The IDF has fired thousands of shells into south Lebanon villages, alleging that Hezbollah men are concealed among the civilian population. Approximately 25 Israeli civilians have been killed as a result of Katyusha missiles to date. The number of dead in Lebanon, the vast majority comprised of civilians who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, is more than 300.
    Worse yet, bombing infrastructure targets such as power stations, bridges and other civil facilities turns the entire Lebanese civilian population into a victim and hostage, even if we are not physically harming civilians. The use of bombings to achieve a diplomatic goal – namely, coercing the Lebanese government into implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1559 – is an attempt at political blackmail, and no less than the kidnapping of IDF soldiers by Hezbollah is the aim of bringing about a prisoner exchange…

(My thanks to friends Len and Libby Traubman, longtime workers for Israeli-Palestinian harmony and justice, who alerted me to this important article.)

Quotes for the record:

All too much rhetorical nonsense relating to the Lebanon crisis is afoot. Where to start? Many of the themes I raised here weeks ago are finally being taken up meekly by reporters and commentators. No comfort in that.
I do not think I have ever been more embarrassed and worried for my country – and I say that as one whom my former colleagues at Houghton would have accused of being quite the conservative, patriotic type. Maybe I got converted somewhere. Or maybe I’ve been quite free of ideological straight-jackets all along. Ah never mind, let the facts – and the quotes below – speak.
So as I craft essays on, among other things, Iran and Hizbullah, here’s a selection of particularly memorable quotes re. Lebanon related matters from the past week or so, with my own brief comments inserted:
Retired Israeli army Col. Gal Luft, first quoted in Washington Post essay by Wright & Ricks on 19 July:

“Israel is attempting to create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy price from the elite in Beirut. The message is: If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-land.”

Or in the “open ended” words of Israeli chief of Staff, Brigadier General Dan Halutz, “Nothing is safe (in Lebanon), as simple as that.”
Dr. Martin Accad, academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary of Lebanon, writing on 25 July in Christianity Today (an influential “evangelical” weekly)

“Seven hundred thousand out of a total Lebanese population of 3.5 million, 20 percent of the population, mostly Shiites, are now being cared for and given refuge by mostly Christian schools, churches, and
other humanitarian organizations. This is the story of the Good Samaritan at a mega scale! And to think that this is the outcome of a strategy that meant to rouse anti-Hezbollah feelings among the Lebanese population and government. Talk about a failed strategy! Of course, this has happened so many times before that any thoughtful
tactician would have learned the lesson by now, but military muscle is always too hedonistic and narcissistic to listen to the voice of reason and history.”

Fascinating – considering the source that published this quote. Lately, it seems that one wi’ll find more “balance” in some “evangelical” Christian sources – home of “dispensationalism” – than you will on CNN domestic, especially “Blitzer-world”…. (CNN International is more like BBC – but very few Americans can get it.)
Zbigniew Brzezinski, from a speech on 20 July 2006

“I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in effect–maybe not in intent–the killing of hostages. The killing of hostages. Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, youÕre killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You are simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing.”

And from the same session’s Q&A:

Secretary of State Rice’s trip to the Middle East will be like “sitting in front of a mirror, talking to herself” if she does not deal diplomatically with the major players.

Continue reading “Quotes for the record:”

Notes from Uganda– Gulu

Written
Thursday, July 27.

I’ve been in Gulu for around 28 hours now– and I’ve learned so much in
this time that my head almost aches! I had one piece of  great
luck shortly before leaving Kampala for here– I got an indirect
introduction to a talented younger broadcaster here called Arthur
Owor.  Arthur is also a lecturer in development studies, peace
studies, and gender studies at Gulu University.  Luckily the
university is on break; and unluckily, the government a few weeks ago
closed down the radio station– Choice FM– on which Arthur had been
doing a regular discussion and call-in show.  So he agreed to help
me set up some interviews, etc, in a way that would maximize the
effectiveness of my (admittedly short) time here.

(My other colleague, Corky Bryant, stayed in Kampala because of her
recent ankle injury.)

My most newsworthy interview was the one I conducted this afternoon
(Thursday) with the Hon.
Norbert Mao, the recently elected chairperson of the Gulu
District Council.  Prior to taking up his present, very important
post, Mao was in the national parliament for ten years.  During
the present peace process between the Government of Uganda and the
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Mao has played a crucial role in helping
to form and lead the “civil society component” of the peace
process.  For example, he told me that over the past few days he
has been receiving a phone call every day from LRA No.2 Vincent Otti,
in the course of which the two of them finalize the list of names of
people in the big civil-society delegation that is planning to go to a
remote location on the Sudan-DRC border early next week to go and
actually meet with Otti, LRA leader Joseph Kony, and the rest of the
LRA leadership there, in person.

The Gulu District Reconciliation and Peace Team, which Mao heads, is
organizing the whole of this civil society delegation.  This
delegation is a follow-up to the smaller group of northern Ugandans–
including many of Kony’s family members– who have been traveling
(slowly) to meet Kony and his group at the Sudan-DRC border area over
the past couple of days.

Did I mention that Kony, Otti, and three of their colleagues are the
five Ugandans against whom the ICC has issued indictments and arrest
warrants?

I’ll put more of Mao’s views on the viability of and expectations for
the current peace process later on here.  Bottom line: He told me
“The time is ripe for peace.”

In addition to seeing him this afternoon, since coming here I’ve
visited an IDP camp, Unyama,
and with Arthur Owor’s help held a group discussion with ten camp
leaders and camp residentsm and conducted interviews with five other
community leaders and activists in Gulu town, including Andrew Olweny, the head of
the NGO Forum, James Otto,
the head of Human Rights Focus, the Anglican Bishop of Northern Uganda,
and the Speaker of the Gulu District Council.  (I also took my
first-ever ride on a boda-boda
motorbike-taxi, to Corky’s horror when I told her about it on the
phone… However, the traffic here isn’t nearly as scary as the traffic
through which the boda-bodas
weave their way back there in Kampala.)

—————-

Here’s the interview with Chairperson Norbert Mao:

Continue reading “Notes from Uganda– Gulu”

Kucinich leads again (in U.S. Congress)

This, from Jewish Voice for Peace:

    Finally, we have a bill in the House of Representatives that we need to support. Brought by Dennis Kucinich and with 23 co-sponsors, H. Con. Res. 450 calls for an immediate cease-fire, multi-party negotiations and an international peacekeeping force. Click here to read the text of the bill.
    The US Campaign to End the Occupation has designated Tuesday, July 25 a national call-in day. JVP, along with the US Campaign, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Council for the National Interest, Partners for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America, United for Peace and Justice, Peace Action, the American Friends Service Committee—Chicago, and Interfaith Peace- Builders are coming together to call for this national day of action.
    Please take a moment to locate your representative’s phone number by going to our home page at www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org. Scroll down near the bottom of the page and enter your zip code under “Who’s Your Rep?” Call your representative on July 25 and urge them to vote Yes on H. Con. Res. 450.
    Now that we have a bill that we can support. It is crucial that we send a clear message to our representatives to urge them to support this bill. Click here to send an e-mail to let your representative know that you support H. Con. Res. 450. But phone calls are much more effective, especially if we all do it on the same day. So call today, July 25 and tell Congress we want the killing to stop now!

Huge congratulations to our friends from JVP for their moral clarity and leadership on this issue and their great organizational skills.
(Confession: I have not had the chance to read the legislation in question. But given the identity of the organizations listed as co-sponsoring this campaign I feel confident of joining it.)

Notes from Uganda, part 2

Yesterday (Monday) we had a good, productive day.  Did I mention
earlier that my traveling/work companion here, Corky Bryant, sprained
her ankle last Wednesday?  It has slowed her down a lot, but it
has still been great being with her here.

In the morning, I was able to do a good, fairly long interview with Morris W. Ogenga-Latigo, 
the leader of the parliamentary opposition.  In the afternoon,
Corky and I were able to interview people at the national Amnesty Commission (founded
in 2001, and still very active) and the World Food Program. 
Both of these meetings were also very interesting.

Ogenga-Latigo is a leading member of the Forum for Demoicratic Change
(FDC), whose leader, Dr. Kizza Besigye was defeated by Pres. Museveni
in last February’s elections and has been the subject of some fairly
evidently politically motivated criminal charges (including treason
charges) by the state.

This year’s election was the first in which parties other than
Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) were allowed to run, and
the FDC put ina fairly good showing. Under some pressure from western
donor governments, Museveni allowed Besigye to run despite the charges
that were still outstanding against him.  (The two men have a long
history of political entanglement, much of it very cordial.) 

I am still trying to figure out the particular quality of Ugandan
politics.  The country is very evidently not the same kind of
brutal dictatorship that it was in Idi Amin’s time. The moves Museveni
has made toward political pluralism seem good, in general, though there
have been clear limits on such moves.  In addition, there are a
number of continuing concerns about his human-rights record– the
greatest of which would have to be in his use and running of the whole
system of IDP camps. (See the previous Uganda Notes post on JWN.) Some
90% of the people in the Acholi regions are in IDP camps, as too are
substantial  numbers of people in the Lango and Teso
regions.  Here are figures from a recent UNDP update:

Numbers of people in IDP camps
(“2006, Preliminary Update”, rounded to nearest thousand):
Acholi Districts 1,098,000 people, in 104 camps
LangoRegion 442,000 people, in 58 camps
Teso Region 160,000 people, in 142 camps

————————–

Ogenga-Latigo told me that he had been an NRM member for 20
years.  He’s
the MP for Agago, and by profession a professor of entomology and
ecology at Makerere University.  He’s also an ethnic Acholi who
feels
the pain of his people very intensely.  I want to write up a lot
more of  the interview later.  But the most important thing I
got from him was his assessment that both the LRA and the NRM are
engaging seriously and in good faith in the current round of
peace talks, which are being hosted in Juba, South Sudan by South Sudan
President Dr. Riek Machar…

Continue reading “Notes from Uganda, part 2”

Rice: far too little, far too late

Condi Rice seems to have been edging toward a realization that you can’t for very long hope to both use Syrian power to help rein in Hizbullah and attack the Syrian regime politically on a sharp, continuous, and very childish basis.
This AP article reports that,

    Rice said Sunday the United States’ poor relationship with Syria is overstated and indicated an openness to working with Damascus to resolve the crisis.

As with everything else halfway sensible she is planning to do regarding the crisis, this tiny shift of emphasis is far too little, far too late.
The administration seems to have gotten to the point where it has zero capacity of its own to judge political dynamics in the Middle East, that is separate from the constant barrage of hasbara (propaganda) and “advice” it gets from the Israelis and their allies. Hence its officials seem to have believed that the “Sunni-Shiite divide” that the Israelis and their allies have been trying to play up for all it is worth in the region as a whole (as in Iraq– pursuant to longtime Israeli front-man Martin Indyk’s April 2003 advice to Bush to play divide and rule there for all its worth) would really bring Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia into diplomatic play regarding Lebanon and strongly on the anti-Hizbullah side.
It ain’t that simple. All those three countries have large and politically publics. Especially Egypt and Jordan. Neither those publics– nor, I have to say, any of the leaders of those regimes– can stomach the sight of what Israel has been doing, with, up to now, the full support of the Bush administration to the people and country of Lebanon.
I read this, also in the same AP piece, which is by someone called Kathy Gannon:

    Arab heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia were pushing Syria to end its support for the guerrillas, Arab diplomats in Cairo said.
    A loss of Syria’s support would deeply weaken Hezbollah, though its other ally, Iran, gives it a large part of its money and weapons. The two moderate Arab governments were prepared to spend heavily from Egypt’s political capital in the region and Saudi Arabia’s vast financial reserves to break Damascus from the guerrillas and Iran, the diplomats said.
    Syria said it will press for a cease-fire to end the fighting — but only in the framework of a broader Middle East peace initiative that would include the return of the Golan Heights. Israel was unlikely to accept such terms but it was the first indication of Syria’s willingness to be involved in efforts to defuse the crisis.
    In Washington, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal asked President Bush to intervene.
    “I have brought a letter from the Saudi King to stop the bleeding in Lebanon,” Saud told reporters after the Oval Office meeting.

I had to issue a wry laugh. This Mubarak regime in Egypt is willing to “spend deeply from its political capital in the region” to aid US efforts to rein in Hizbullah?? And what political capital would that be, pray?

Background on Hizbullah

Just a reminder, in case any readers here do not recall that I had a lengthy article on the history and politics of Hizbullah in Boston Review last year.
Right now I’m in an internet-poor country, Uganda, doing some challenging research into war and peacemaking issues here, and unable to keep up with all breaking developments in Lebanon. But I think much of the material I have in that piece should prove useful to people today.