How long will Lebanon will play Russian roulette

The assassination of Pierre Gemayel comes as an ominous warning sign for the only democratic state in the Arab world. This high profile killing adds to the list of assassination victims including former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and MP Gebran Tueni and a couple of prominent anti-Syrian journalists. The brutal murder of Pierre Gemayel comes at a time when Lebanon has plunged into deeper political crises.

Pierre Gemayel was an outspoken critic of Syrian influence over Lebanon, was a member of the Christian Phalange Party and industry minister. The son of former President Amin Gemayel, Pierre was born in 1972. A lawyer and the youngest MP in the Lebanese Parliament, Gemayel was first elected to the legislature in 2000 and was re-elected in 2005. Many speculating his killing is a remainder of overwhelming Syrian influence over the politics of Lebanon. While the international community condemns the killing the reasons behind such acts have deeper political motives.

Parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri said Tuesday that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's proposal to form a national unity government is the only solution to end the increasing political chaos gripping the country. The Sunnis supporting Hariri’s son Saad Hariri is strongly linked with the other parties in the government but Shiites are gathering under the Hezbollah camp to foil their opponents. The pro-Syrian Hezbollah is likely to reject the offer. Furthermore the resignation of six ministers from Hezbollah and its allies have not done any good for the dying democratic process in Lebanon. The killing has now thwarted any possibilities of re-establishment of “unity government”

Adding to the confusion Damascus has denied its involvement. George Jabbour, a Syrian parliamentarian told news agencies Syria has no intention to destabilize the region. A viable government in Lebanon and a peaceful Iraq is what this isolated country wants. Most Lebanese, no doubt will reject such claims as strong evidence shows Syrian involvement in the previous killing though they have kept on denying.

Hezbollah today holds the key to solve the deepening political crisis. Their overwhelming support among the general people mostly Shiites have given them an unwritten advantage. The abduction of corporal Shalom resulting into a war was fought valiantly by them against a towering Israeli army which no doubt has increased their popularity. The eventful war in July this year ended with the Hezbollah claiming a “holy victory” and Israel’s moral standpoint regarding the war badly damaged. A strong government was likely to be formed as the Syrian forces were withdrawn from South Lebanon after thirty years of occupation and a settlement with Israel. But the resignation of Shiite ministers representing the “unity government” after weeks of negotiations added insult to a seemingly impossible task of maintaining peace in Lebanon. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah declaration of the ousting of Western-backed government of Fouad Siniora to be replaced by a “clean” cabinet has brought an inevitable standoff to unity efforts.




Over the years, Israel, Syria, Iran and the United States have become key components in shaping politics in Lebanon. Israel eyes on total demolition of Hezbollah which would ensure their monstrous presence in the Middle East ever so strongly. Iran on the other hand is a key ally to Hezbollah who won heart of Lebanese people through goodwill and disparaging Zionist motives. Neither Israel nor the United States want a stable Middle East that will jeopardize their interests. The July War was not condemned by the US and their naked support for Zionism was exposed further. US president George Bush openly justified Israel’s military campaign to demolish a Shiite group that enjoys warmer ties with Iran. But the Bush administration has recently experienced a drubbing in the mid-term elections and immediately offered peace talks with Syria and Iran who up until now were the “axis of evil” in the eyes of Bush administration. This change of policy towards the neighbors with whom Lebanon had strong cultural and historical ties may have dampened Israel’s motives against the Hezbollah. A volatile Lebanon will only enhance Israel’s chances of overcoming their deadliest enemy since Yassir Arafat and Saddam Hussein and push further the chances of locking horns with Iran.



The world wide condemnation of Syria will only benefit Israel. Interestingly, Lebanon is the possible loophole that will champion their Zionist cause against Iran and Syria and turn Palestine into a worsened colonial ghetto according to their “road-map”. This unwanted murder of a anti-Syrian politician could take the country back to it’s blood-stained past rife with civil wars. Onus is now on Lebanon and the statesmanship of the men in charge. Will the politicians be able to patch up their own differences and try to build on a prosperous future? Or the disbelief and manacles of distrust gathered in the different camps will prevail? Or the killings of opposition politicians will go on unabated wallop Lebanon in the end? The answer lies within the country, not in the hands West or the United States and definitely not in Syria. The Russian roulette which has started must be brought to a halt or else sworn enemies of the Arab people will triumph in devouring yet another victim.

Sylvia*

Beautiful are your verses
but
Lines as dreaded as Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen*
definitely are suicidal
Pangs you created
Are intense, heart-felt
Senile, sinuous, Swirling.

Your alter-ego did speak in Daddy
Laid bare the shattered, naked soul
Describing a life always hanging on a thread
which must be nightmarish
haunting, ghastly, menacing
stained confessions.

Ted Hughes loved watching you
Wonderful you looked with him
Unhappy lovers must have
glared at you two with jealousy

Animal symbolism
left Ted Hughes spellbound
Tying a second knot with it
he betrayed you or was it your
failing imagination ?

Beautiful things did end
Perhaps began your contemplation of death
You urged pills to take over
An estimation of tranquility
That is what you were up to

Poetry only made vivid the truth
you strangled,
Left the “self” forever
Flickering beyond the evening star
What remained is Ariel
encountered death your loving Ted,
obsessed still probably
with the thought-fox, crow
jaguars & pikes.
Well, how you two fell in love,
the weary world can’t remember.

• A tribute to Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes, famous poet couples.
• Daddy is a confessional poem where Sylvia Plath speaks of Nazi concentration camps in Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen

Confessions and betrayal

Certainty shudders
Limitations are pain
Daily chores disgusts
Fantasies haunt.

Open declaration of revolt
Put me under vault
Actions are aired
Turning a virtuoso maimed and jaded.

Now…
Confinement rule a realm
of inexhaustible creativity

Society nimble the subtle heart
while perennial sorrows creep in
Mermaids alluding Prufrock
visit to save the soul plagued form birth.

They don’t sing but wait to be seen.

Decolonization reconsidered

Historically inflicted boundaries rendered hegemony
Moments of lingering, indecisions threw them
under the Enlightenment cult
Savage, sensual, feminine, penetrable were they deemed
Stripped off true identity and history
Inca, Aztec, Hottentot and Robinson Crusoe’s Xury*

But still wars raged, mutiny brewed
Yet masters proved imperishable, in exploitation lewd.
A new era of sycophants ushered
Hybridity stifled, Fridays created*.

Would it have been worthwhile, would it have been worth it?
If the tide was turned, by chance, reversed?

Confused, erratic leaders looked
Triumphant, braggart of high kultur
Even they were shocked, as the Übermensch
and the Allies slew each other
With the dagger of imprudence
The hybrids under control were let loose
New nations were born with new hopes,
In a world of chaos and conflicting isms
Where emancipation flirted with schism.

Notes:

a. Xury, Friday-Native men in Strange and surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

b. Kultur(Ger) – Culture

c. Übermensch (Ger)- Superman(coined by Nietzsche), Nazis called themselves Übermensch toargue racial superiority.

Operatic Tenor

Heraclitus said one cannot step into the same river twice
Such argument is convincing to wise lovers
involved in tiring intimacy
Lying in a last grasp heartache.

Vespers hardly are tangible now
dying each moment
flickering flames
leading to bliss before

Lust confused with desire
are only sobs and sighs
Unkempt bastions of trust
sucks the inner life out

Souls seethe open
bulging with discontents
laments amorous ditties gone dead

Yet such clandestine moments
invoke bygone magic of temptation
unimagined just a day before.

Constructing a death blow

Overwhelmingly imprudent
Is this the feeling we get
when people get killed or pestered
while on a pilgrimage
shattering families, tarnishing holy image.

But their lives were not lost
A telling success recalled at every opportunity they got
Holy land visited with money
bribery begot

Back home the son senses scope
To plunge in sins
Festivity turns the swine on
The victim
a menacing beauty in her twenties
otherwise self-obsessed
yields herself passionately
as raging hormones overrun to fuel
yet another abortion.

An Oedipal observation of holy matrimony

Holy matrimony begets existence
It is that ancient law
Though rigidly institutionalized
Still devoutly practiced
With a sense of horror
As behind the back lurks
Sophoclean tragedy
Codifying incestuous sin.

Subconscious shelters that dreaded possibility
While the eyes droop, ears begin to twitch
And the nose sniffs at the floating eau de cologne
While the priest utters “Lo! And Behold!”
Adds, “I pronounce them man and wife”.

Round of applause gives way of robust kisses
Of the drooling couples
While the infantile mind
Bafflingly declares “O yes, marriage is a bliss”.









* Anthologized in Maps & Metaphors writing by young writers from Bangladesh & UK