The Warlords of Jebel Al Sheik



http://www.lebaneseforces.com/blastfromthepast005.asp


September 1983Over 110 villages or Christian quarters in the Chouf were ethnically cleansed of their Christian inhabitants: Throats were slit, bodies hacked apart with axes, many were burned alive over fire red, iron bars. Syrian soldiers and members of the Druze community of Lebanon took part in these massacres. Likewise, on November 8, 1982, Israeli Druze officers allowed the Lebanese Druze to massacre the Christian population in certain villages such as Kfarnabrakh, at the foot of the cedars of Mount Barouk.Walid Joumblatt, the leader of the Lebanese Druze, gave the order to massacre the Chouf Christians.

February 1984Occupation of West Beirut by Amal, the pro-Syrian Shi'ite militia. On February 6, 1984, Amal supported by Syrian troupes, attacked the Lebanese army stationed in West Beirut. The fighting left at least one hundred dead and over 400 injured. Nabih Berri, Head of Amal, and Ghazi Kanaan (now dead per suicide via Syrian media accounts), commander of the Syrian forces in Lebanon, are responsible for this slaughter.

March 1985 Exodus of tens of thousands of Christians from Iklim El_Kharroub and the eastern part of Saida. The Palestinians and Lebanese Druze laid siege to, pillaged and burned over twenty Christian villages. Walid Joumblatt, Yasser Arafat and Syrian officers, planned these massacres.

*In September, Hobeika ordered LF militiamen into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the outskirts of the city, which had recently been evacuated by the PLO. Over the next three days, LF forces killed over 800 residents of the camp.* NOTE: Hobeika is the first of the mysterious assassinations in this round in 1982. He was murdered because he turned state evidence AND well...follow this from: http://www.meib.org/articles/0201_l1.htm

Hobeika was involved in a second massacre in March 1985 that would later come back to haunt him. The American CIA reportedly paid Hobeika (through Lebanese army intelligence officers) to assassinate Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of the militant Shi'ite group Hezbollah, considered by US officials to have taken part in planning the October 1983 bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 servicemen. However, the assassination attempt that Hobeika carried out was not the surgical operation that his benefactors had hoped for - the car bombing near Fadlallah's residence killed dozens of bystanders but left the intended target unscathed. The massacre led the CIA to terminate its relationship with Hobeika and gave Hezbollah a lasting grudge against him.

Who invited SYRIA again?

That same month, Hobeika (now dead) joined Samir Geagea (now out of prison) and Karim Pakradouni in revolting against LF commander Fouad Abu Nader, who had begun to follow the lead of his uncle, President Amine Gemayel (dead too, assassinated), in reconciling with Damascus. After Geagea stepped down from the joint leadership of the LF a few months later, Hobeika advanced to the top of the militia's political hierarchy. Hobeika, who was until then a staunch opponent of Syrian intervention in Lebanon, abruptly realigned himself in hopes of reaching an agreement with Syrian-backed militias and assuming the presidency in a Syrian-dominated post-war republic. In September 1985, he traveled to Damascus. The leader of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) militia, Walid Jumblatt, reportedly asked Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam why he was negotiating with "this murderer," to which Khaddam replied, "Who in Lebanon is not a murderer?"1

In December, Hobeika and Pakradouni joined Jumblatt and Amal leader Nabih Berri in Damascus to sign the Tripartite Accord, an agreement between the country's three top militias that would have legalized the Syrian presence in Lebanon. After details of the accord were published in the Lebanese press, however, Christian opposition to the agreement grew rapidly. In January 1986, rebellious LF forces led by Geagea, with help from Amine Gemayel's partisans, seized control of east Beirut and Hobeika fled to France.

Although he was discredited within his own Christian community, Hobeika was encouraged by Khaddam and Lebanese financier (and future prime minister) Rafiq Hariri (NOW DEAD) to return to the country and establish his own militia in Syrian-occupied areas. For the next five years, Hobeika served his new patrons and awaited the day that his support for Damascus would be rewarded.

And for CRYING OUT LOUD: After Syria invaded east Beirut and ousted Michel Aoun (now out of prison) in October 1990, completing its conquest of Lebanon, Hobeika was twice "elected" to parliament and occupied several important cabinet positions. Hobeika's post-war political career is a good illustration of why most Lebanese feel such intense skepticism toward their government. After having contributed so substantially to the creation of hundreds of thousands of internal refugees and handicapped persons injured during the war - two of the most pressing social problems in postwar Lebanon - Hobeika was appointed minister of the displaced (October 1991) and minister of social affairs and the disabled (November 1992). In May 1995 he was appointed minister of electricity and water resources, a post he held for over three years....

So Hezbollah (terrorist organization well known for their plots and treasons tee hee) says:

NO HOBEIKA: Prior to the August 2000 elections, Hezbollah officials objected when Damascus included Hobeika on the "Consensus and Renewal" list, a pro-Syrian electoral coalition running against allies of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt in the Baabda-Aley district, arguing that the former militia chieftain had the blood of thousands of Muslims on his hands. Although a compromise was reached to leave a slot on the list blank so that Hobeika's supporters could write in his name, Hobeika suffered a humiliating defeat in the elections. Bet Jumblatt didn't mind his blood brother on that list though!

Ah.....September 11th....and William Cooper shot dead too in the Superstition Mountains a few weeks later by a redneck SHARIF.....Damn those Sharifs! Sometimes a laugh helps....

In the aftermath of September 11, Hobeika attempted to win American support by contacting the CIA to offer his help in locating and capturing Imad Mughniyah, the former head of special overseas operations for Hezbollah who is listed on the Bush administration's most wanted terrorist list. Hobeika had collaborated with CIA operatives in Lebanon in the early 1980s and attended a training course at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in 1982. His services would have been a valuable asset in the hunt for Mughniyah. Hobeika owned one of the largest private security firms in Lebanon (in effect, a small militia made up of bodyguards with legally-registered weaponry and skilled intelligence operatives) that has a presence in the largely Shi'ite southern suburbs of Beirut - the most likely location of Mughniyah.

A reasonable amount of time.... we take such a careful and reasonable amount of time to delay discussion of one's death.

At 9:30 AM on January 24, Hobeika and three bodyguards left his apartment on Kamel Asaad street in suburban Hazmieh southeast of the capital en route to his office in Sin al-Fil. Shortly after their departure, the blue Range Rover they were driving slowed down to pass by a Mercedes parked on the side of a narrow road. At that instant, an estimated 22 pounds of TNT in the Mercedes suddenly detonated (apparently by remote control). The explosion reportedly catapulted the former warlord's charred remains over sixty meters from the wrecked SUV, killed a bystander and injured six others. The blast blackened neighboring apartment buildings, destroyed dozens of cars parked nearby, and even shattered glass windows up to one kilometer away from the scene.

Hours after the assassination, Lebanese Interior Minister Elias Murr held a press conference and announced that the authorities had "confirmation that Israel and its agents were behind this terrorist act." President Lahoud and Prime Minister Hariri also insisted that Israel was involved. Since categorical statements alleging Israeli involvement are generally made by Lebanese and Syrian officials whenever there are manifestations of anti-Syrian dissent in Lebanon, official statements in Beirut and Damascus do not reveal anything substantial about the incident. Israeli officials denied the claims.

The Suspects

The Israelis?
Since Israel has carried out similar assassinations of its enemies in Lebanon in the past (e.g. the January 1979 assassination of Abu Ali Hassan Salameh, the commander of Yasser Arafat's Force 17), it might have been able to carry out the assassination of Hobeika, either directly or through Lebanese proxies, even in an area like Hazmieh. Contrary to widespread Arab and Western media speculation, however, Israel does not appear to have had a compelling motive to kill Hobeika, as there was no reason to believe that he would reveal credible new information about Israeli involvement in the massacre during his testimony in Belgium. His SLA story would not have been taken seriously enough to threaten Israel - in fact, the ridiculousness of the story would have undermined the credibility of the lawsuit. Indeed, the assassination worked against Israeli interests insofar as it allowed Hobeika's vague allegations of direct Israeli involvement to attract international media attention without being formally specified or cross-examined in a courtroom.

The Palestinians?
In light of the large numbers of Palestinians that Hobeika was responsible for killing during the war in Lebanon, the possibility that an armed Palestinian faction carried out the assassination cannot be discounted. Just last year, in fact, a senior official of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in Lebanon, Bassam Abu Sharif, threatened to kill Hobeika.5 Notwithstanding such boasts, assassinating Hobeika would not really have advanced Palestinian interests since he was already politically irrelevant. Moreover, Palestinians in Lebanon are extremely vulnerable and would have risked severe retaliation had they conducted such an operation without Syria's blessing and it was traced to a Palestinian faction. After the assassination, Fatah officials in Lebanon apparently feared that they might be blamed - they moved quickly to prevent any public celebrations in camps under their control and issued a decree prohibiting residents of Sabra and Shatila from speaking to journalists for a 48-hour period. "Emotionally, people may feel some relief from Hobeika's death," acknowledged a Fatah military bureau member in Lebanon, "but if you look at it from a political perspective, this is not a good thing for us."6

The Lebanese Forces
Another possible culprit is the radical wing of the LF. In 1991, according to the Lebanese authorities, LF operatives loyal to Samir Geagea carried out a 1991 bombing which destroyed Hobeika's car and killed one of his bodyguards. In June 1998, the Lebanese authorities claimed to have uncovered a plot by former LF intelligence operatives to assassinate Hobeika, as well as Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, the chief of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, and then-Interior Minister Michel Murr. The 13 alleged members of the cell who were arrested by security forces reportedly received their orders via the Internet from an LF office in Australia.
However, as the above failures illustrate, radical LF factions have been thoroughly penetrated by Lebanese and Syrian intelligence over the last ten years. It is highly unlikely that any anti-Syrian faction of the LF could have undertaken an operation of this complexity in Hazmieh unless it was coordinating with the Syrians - which seems unlikely.
Although a Western news agency in Cyprus received a fax claiming responsibility in the name of a previously unknown group called "Lebanese for a Free and Independent Lebanon," this was probably a ploy designed to implicate the anti-Syrian opposition. It is possible that former LF officials currently aligned with the Syrians might have been motivated to assassinate Hobeika, fearing that he might speak candidly about their involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and received permission from the Syrians to do so. The fact that the Lebanese government's investigation of the massacre was suspended in 1983 suggests that there are politically sensitive details to the case that have not seen the light of day. However, while this remains an outside possibility, there are more plausible explanations.

The Syrians
As the final months of Hobeika's life clearly indicate, the Syrians had completely withdrawn their protection and instructed the Lebanese judiciary to take action against him, or at least threaten to do so. Given the timing of the judicial moves, it appears likely that the Syrian intelligence learned about his attempts to approach the CIA. Had the Syrians learned that he was considering leaving the country (which also appears likely, since his bodyguard was talking freely about it), they would have had a strong motive to eliminate him, or allow others to eliminate him, before he could do so. Moreover, the Syrians stood to gain from the killing in other important ways. The event could serve as a pretext for a massive crackdown on opponents of the Syrian occupation in Lebanon. More generally, the assassination, which bore an uncanny resemblance to killings during the war, lent support to Syria's claim that a withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon would lead to internal violence and instability. However, while it appears that Damascus wanted to see Hobeika dead and permitted the operation to occur in an area with a strong Syrian intelligence presence, it is not all that likely that they carried it out themselves - it would have been more expedient to simply facilitate an operation by a local group.

Hezbollah's Foreign Operations Branch (Imad Mughniyah)
As previously mentioned, Hezbollah's political leadership has its own grudge against Hobeika dating back to the March 1985 car bomb attack against Fadlallah, as does the movement's main external sponsor, Iran, for his role in the deaths of four Iranian diplomats during the civil war. A more immediate motive for eliminating Hobeika would have been the desire to preempt his assistance to the CIA in locating Imad Mughniyah, the head of Hezbollah's Foreign Operations Branch (jihaz al-amaliyyat al-kharijiyya). Although Mughniyah's agency is no longer officially part of Hezbollah, this is mainly a facade designed to allow the group's political leadership to maintain plausible deniability regarding its operations. Logistically it is part of the same organization - the main distinction being that Mughniyah coordinates directly with Iran and Syria, and maintains a degree of operational autonomy.While there is no direct evidence linking Mughniyah to the assassination, he had the most compelling motive of any suspect to order a hit on Hobeika, his operatives in Lebanon were clearly capable of such an operation, and the Syrians appear to have been more than willing to facilitate it.

QUIZ:

Who are the two names missing from this roster of usual suspects?


What is the meaning of Mainly a FACADE?


Who is next?