In 2007, Peter Kassig, a nineteen-year-old from Indianapolis, Indiana, left the Army and embarked on a period of deep searching. His deployment to Iraq, as a member of an élite Ranger battalion, earlier that year, had been cut short for medical reasons, but it had left a lasting impression: he knew that waging war was not for him.

Kassig returned to Indiana, where, in the course of the next five years, he tried college and marriage, but neither took. During a break from classes in the spring of 2012, he travelled to Lebanon, and, as the crisis in Syria swelled, he decided to stay in the region. On October 1, 2013, Kassig was captured by Syrian militants, and he has been held by them since. Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which has been steadily executing Western hostages, now says that he will be the next to be killed.

Kassig was one of many itinerant idealists in Beirut, Syrian and foreign alike, who were drawn to the uprising: students gave up their classes to stand in front of tanks, doctors left lucrative practices to treat patients on the front lines, Western journalists wanted to share the war with the world. What set Kassig apart from many of them was his intense drive and restless engagement with his surroundings. While friends drank beer at bars on Gemmayze Street, Kassig grabbed camping gear and set out for the mountains. He visited the Palestinian refugee camps that dot the landscape around Beirut, thinking about ways to bring solar power and other utilities into those neglected communities. Later, as the war in Syria encroached on Lebanon’s borders, sending desperate and wounded civilians into rural communities in the north, Kassig travelled to Tripoli to volunteer his services at a clinic, suturing wounds and comforting the dying. (He had received medical training in the Army and had studied to be an E.M.T. in Indiana.)

 

By Marwan Muasher and Kim Ghattas

Global debate in recent weeks has centred on United States President Barack Obama’s initiative to prevent the advance of the Islamic State. But another force has emerged as an unlikely rampart against the barbaric and delusional leaders of the self-proclaimed caliphate: Lebanese pluralism. Indeed, despite the shortcomings of its political system, Lebanon can provide a template for managing cultural diversity and rejecting radicalism in an unstable and fragmented setting.

In August, the Lebanese army showed considerable fortitude as it fought Islamic State militants in the village of Arsal, near the border with Syria. Though the army has sustained heavy losses — including two soldiers that were beheaded — it has managed to compel the militants, who were operating inside a Syrian refugee camp, largely to withdraw. And it continues to fight when the need arises. International aid is now flowing towards the army, with Saudi Arabia alone pledging more than US$3 billion (S$3.83 billion).

But the international community should move beyond military aid to support Lebanon’s real strengths: Its moderate, pluralist and vibrant society. After all, that is what has enabled the country, against all odds, to avoid all-out conflict, making it a beacon — however faint — of hope in a crisis-ravaged region.

HOW THE LEBANESE RALLIED TOGETHER

Lebanon’s resilience has confounded expectations, given its lack of a shared national identity — a result of deep social divisions that resemble, to some extent, those besetting Iraq — and notoriously weak state institutions. In fact, Lebanon’s political system has been paralysed by disagreements over Syria’s civil war, the consequences of which have been pouring over the Lebanese border. The country has not had a President since May, the Parliament is not functioning and the Cabinet is practically powerless.

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  Head of al-Mustaqbal Movement Saad Hariri is expected to meet with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Monday in the Italian capital Rome. Local newspapers published on Wednesday reported that the meeting will tackle the presidential impasse. Lebanon has been without a president since May when the tenure of Michel Suleiman ended. The majority of […]

  If you thought that two disastrous wars in the Middle East spread over 13 miserable years might cure Washington of its delusion that the next war will solve all our problems, you were wrong. The truth is that the people in power and contending for power have learned nothing. And guess what: two years […]

By DAVID SCHENKER

The Obama administration has responded to the beheadings of two American journalists by launching an air campaign to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ISIS, as it is also known, is kidnapping and decapitating Lebanese citizens too, and in recent weeks two Lebanese soldiers were killed. But Beirut is in a state of paralysis, fearing that an assault on ISIS in Syria would result in the execution of about two-dozen other Lebanese troops and police currently held hostage by the group.

Lebanon already hosts nearly 1.5 million Syrian refugees, has a prolonged vacancy in the president’s office, and is experiencing increasing civil strife. So the kidnapping ordeal makes a precarious situation worse as Lebanon emerges as the next front line in the Islamist militia’s offensive. A state comprised largely of Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Christians, Lebanon is divided about the war in Syria. Members of Lebanon’s Sunni sect sympathize with the Syrian rebels against the government of Bashar Assad, and some are crossing the border to join the militant Islamist groups in the revolt. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah has deployed thousands of troops in support of the nominally Shiite Assad in Damascus.

Arbitrating between these hostile sectarian groups is the Lebanese Armed Forces, or LAF, a historically nonaligned institution with broad popular support. Recently, however, this former bastion of sectarian neutrality has been cooperating with Hezbollah to target Sunni militants in Lebanon like ISIS. This tack has eroded the military’s stature and placed it squarely in the cross-hairs of Sunni terrorist groups.

  The families of the soldiers and policemen abducted from the Arsal region briefly blocked on Monday the Tarshish-Zahleh road in an attempt to pressure the government to exert more efforts to release their loved ones. They also blocked the Dahr al-Baydar road. The roads were also closed off against humanitarian cases, reported various media […]

  EIRUT: Health Minister Wael Abu Faour opened a probe Monday into the mysterious death of a 4-year-old girl that occurred one day after she was vaccinated, raising speculation that she might have been given a contaminated vaccine. News of Serene Rakan’s death circulated on social media platforms, after her father had posted on his […]

  SURUC, Turkey — Kurdish fighters battling ISIS militants for the Syrian town of Kobane employed a new tactic when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in an attack claimed to have killed dozens of militants. The young woman, a full-time fighter with the Syria-based Kurdish rebel group the People’s Protection Units (YPG), killed […]