Conflict in the Lebanese Telecommunications Ministry last week is a worrying further sign of instability in the country, writes Lucy Fielder in Beirut As yet another governmental vacuum dragged on in Lebanon last week, a showdown at the country's Telecommunications Ministry last Thursday highlighted the animosity between Hizbullah's 8 March Alliance and its 14 March Coalition opponents. In what both sides described as a "coup" by the other, the stand-off started when armed police took control of a floor of the ministry building, only ending when a furious Lebanese President Michel Suleiman demanded that legal action be taken against the chief of police. Coming one day before an attack on an Italian UNIFIL patrol in the south of the country, the incident has been taken by many to be a sign that the power struggle at the top of Lebanon's government and the unrest in neighbouring Syria are taking their toll on the country's security. "We are going through a worrying phase for Lebanon's peace and security, and this incident was a symptom of that," said Omar Nashabe, justice editor at Al-Akhbar daily, which leans towards the 8 March Alliance. "With this tension in Syria and the whole region, I'm afraid that Lebanon is on the brink." Thursday's row was the culmination of a year and a half of tensions between Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas and Abdel-Moneim Youssef, director-general of the ministry and chairman of OGERO, a state-run telecoms provider. "There was an imbalance, Youssef in his double role in effect had more power than the minister," said Riad Bahsoun, a Beirut-based expert for the International Telecommunications Union. Youssef is loyal to the anti-Syrian and Western-backed 14 March Coalition led by caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri. Nahhas is a political ally of Michel Aoun, the main Christian leader in Hizbullah's 8 March Alliance. At issue in the dispute was a third GSM network, including a set of base stations donated to Lebanon by China several years ago. This was signed over to the state-run OGERO telecoms provider for operation by the government a year and a half ago, Bahsoun said, and the latest spat occurred when troops from the Internal Security Forces (ISF), Lebanon's police, prevented Nahhas from entering his own ministry with a team of technicians. Nahhas had wanted to transfer the equipment to one of Lebanon's two mobile providers, MTC Touch, whose information branch is thought to be close to Al-Hariri. Furious caretaker Interior Minister Ziad Baroud called on ISF head Major-General Ashraf Rifi to pull his forces out of the ministry, which he refused to do, even when president Suleiman himself had added his voice to the calls. The stand-off only ended on Friday when the army took control of the building. Baroud, who is close to Suleiman, then resigned in protest. Earlier this week, Suleiman referred the case to the country's Justice Ministry, raising the prospect of legal action against Rifi. Many in the 8 March Alliance are asking why the ISF acted so forcefully to protect the network, even going as far as to defy the president's orders. "There is some worrying but inconclusive information that the third network was being used to communicate with insurgents or protesters in Syria," Nashabe said. While emphasising that the evidence was incomplete, he said the extent to which the ISF had gone to prevent anyone taking away the equipment was noteworthy. "They went with gunmen and entered the building. Why would you add to the tensions at a time like this in order to protect the property of the government, against the government, using the government's weapons," he asked. Lebanon is currently split over the unrest in neighbouring Syria, where the government has been engaged in a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters for more than 10 weeks. Damascus says it is facing an armed insurgency, and many in Lebanon from both sides of the divide are wary of their tiny, fragile country becoming embroiled in Syria's internal problems, fearing a backlash if the regime stays in power. Bahsoun said the network itself was worth just $5 million and could connect about 50,000 users. It was being used within the ministry for training purposes and was still being tested, he said. "This event has left suspicions in many people's minds about the true importance of this equipment," he said. Bahsoun said that some were asking whether the base stations in fact concealed further data-transmission and analysis equipment. The third network has a signal range of just 30 kilometres, he said, but an offshore vessel with an antenna could in theory relay signals beyond Lebanon's shores. "In theory, many things are possible, and many political assumptions are being made," Bahsoun said. "But that doesn't mean that this is what was happening." Telecommunications in general are particularly sensitive in Lebanon. In May 2008, a government clampdown on Shia political and military group Hizbullah's communications networks prompted the group to take over parts of Beirut and other areas. Over the past few years, more than 150 alleged spies for Israel have been arrested in Lebanon, many of them working for telecommunications companies or in the communications departments of the army and ISF. Despite the legal steps taken this week, Nashabe believes the events were a "political issue, which they will try to resolve politically." However, he added that when taken together with the coming indictments to be made by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, expected to indict Hizbullah in the killing of Al-Hariri's father, Rafik Al-Hariri, in 2005 and other incidents in Lebanon, the incident had shone a spotlight on local tensions. Ministers from Hizbullah's 8 March Alliance previously resigned in January over the expected indictments, bringing down the government. "The whole thing stinks in the way that before a volcano erupts it gives off gases," Nashabe said. "There needs to be a solution before the whole country gets covered in burning lava."
