EWD Publications LEBANON, SYRIA

December 2006 News East-West Debt

East-West Debt started its activities in 1997 when Dutch and Belgian economists and counsellors with more than 15 years of experience in the market found each other and decided to establish a structured cooperation.

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From the januari 2007 publication:

LEBANON,SYRIA AND THE MILITANTTERRORISTS.
How Hizbollah gets away with murder.
The fairly fragile situation in which Lebanon finds itself after the summer war with Israel is not an enviable position. Lebanon has been economically hurt, its infrastructure badly damage and its recently found political confidence shattered. Damages are estimated at billions of dollars. Even more damaging to the political stability and social adhesion is the loss of more than one thousand lives and the permanent threat of over a million cluster bombs buried deep in Lebanon's soil waiting to hurt civilians in years, maybe decades to come.
Before this summers war between Lebanon's southern based Hizbollah movement and Israel, Lebanon had successfully ousted Syrian troops who had been present in Lebanon for the last 30 years. The ousting of said troops had been initiated by the later named March 14 movement, a coalition of the Sunni and some Christian factions, with support of their people who marched in the streets after the killing of anti-Syria former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The Shia Hizbollah is at the moment an official political party but is holding only 14 of parliaments 128 seats . It is the strong Syrian and Iranese backing of Hizbollah that makes this movement a force to be reckoned with. It was the will of Hizbollah to wage war on Israel and it is Hizbollah that is emerging as the victor. Hassan Nasrellah, is a charismatic leader whose support has only increased since the war of which he declared himself winner although Israel thinks otherwise.
Since the beginning of Novemberboth the US and the UK have voiced great concerns over an alleged plot to destabilize Lebanon once more. Evil geniuses of this plot would be both Hizbollah and president Assad of Syria, in cahoots with Iran. Main goal would be to gain control of Lebanese parliament and instate a pro Syrian government. Most diplomats think this move to gain control is taking place under some urgency because the current anti-Syria government under leadership of Siniora has installed a commission to investigate the killing of Hariri, who was allegedly killed by Syria's secret service. President Assad and Hizbollah do not want to come under scrutiny of such a commission and certainly do not want to lose face with the UN who has had a peacekeeping force in place in the region for over twenty years. If such allegations of Syrian involvement in the killing of Hariri could be proven, this would seriously damage Assads position in the region and make him lose any chance of some kind of control in Lebanon. So, as you can see Syria needs Hizbollah to broaden its position in Lebanese parliament and this is exactly what Hassan Nasrallah is aiming for. He has been stepping up the pressure by withdrawing Hizbollah ministers from the government, demanding new elections and the creation of a "national unity government" that would give the group and its allies a one-third blocking veto in the cabinet. Hizbollah claims it can put masses of people in the streets of Beirut to peacefully force the government to commit to new elections. Does Hizbollah really have the power to influence the masses or are they just a minority holding a lot of weapons and therefore holding the type of power that fundamentalist, terrorist groups usually hold, the power of fear? A Professor of political science at Columbia University, Sheri Berman, seems to think otherwise. She claims that Hizbollah has a wide spread following amongst the population of Lebanon amongst other countries because Hizbollah has been aiding the people of Lebanon since it descended into civil war in the 1970s. It picked up the slack, providing desperately needed services to hundreds of thousands of people especially to the Shia population the countries largest and poorest group. Hizbollah provided medical care, hospitals, housing, clean water and schools thus winning "hearts and minds" and building support from the grassroots up. Keeping in mind that the government of Siniora has not had a long time to build up the trust of the people like Hizbollah has over decades, he has not been able to keep them safe nor grant them the economic growth they have been longing for. It would be great if this modern, democratic government could have the chance to do so, but it seems they have already run out of time. Hizbollah is winning the battle over the reconstruction of Lebanon. Drawing on financial support from Iran and its grassroots social network the militant organization is using the rebuilding effort to gain even more popularity and status.
This post conflict success of Hizbollah raises a huge dilemma for the western world who want to help Lebanon with their recovery efforts and also want to seize export opportunities or tender for building contracts amongst other things but certainly have no desire what so ever to work with a bunch of radical Islamic terrorist. Even more important Western countries or companies are not willing to further legitimize Hizbollah by treating them as serious business partners of normal, acceptable standing.