Martin Jay

According to media reports, the Syrian refugee issue received a massive shot in the arm last week as world leaders met in London to confront the biggest humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War. In fact, a closer look at those reports reveals that some critical factors were not taken into consideration.

While the UN asked for $8 billion (Dh29bn) aid to help Syria and surrounding regions in 2016, the London conference pledged $6bn.

There are about 2,000 camps in Lebanon, where many people have been struggling to pay the rent and utility bills with a monthly $21 allowance – which is meant for food.

Recently I visited one of these camps where I noticed that most people were eating bread and not much else.

Daily Star.com.lb

The presidency issue should only be resolved internally, General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim said in his monthly column published Friday.

“The outside [states] did not elect our lawmakers, we did… The issue of electing a president should be an internal issue and should only be resolved at the Parliament,” Ibrahim said in the 29th edition of the General Security magazine.

The security chief opined that he did not deny “the strategic importance” of external parties in solving the presidential crisis, but said that regional and world powers “should not impose their will on others.”

Doina Chiacu, Reuters

Saudi Arabia said on Thursday it was ready to participate in any ground operations in Syria if the U.S.-led alliance decides to start such operations, an adviser to the Saudi defence minister said.

"The kingdom is ready to participate in any ground operations that the coalition (against Islamic State) may agree to carry out in Syria," Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, who is also the spokesman for the Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen, told the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV in an interview.

Asseri said Saudi Arabia had been an active member of the U.S.-led coalition that had been fighting Islamic State in Syria since 2014, and had carried out more than 190 aerial missions.

He said Saudi Arabia, which has been leading Arab military operations against the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen, believed that to win against Islamic State, the coalition needed to combine aerial operations with ground operations.

The U.S. embassy in Prague on Thursday blasted a decision by the Czech Republic’s justice minister not to extradite a Lebanese national to the U.S. to face weapons charges.

The move came on the same day that five Czech citizens who went missing in Lebanon in July returned home, leading to speculation that the Czech government did a deal for their release.

Prague’s Municipal Court allowed the extradition of Ali Taan Fayad, also known as Ali Amin, and two citizens of Ivory Coast last year but Justice Minister Robert Pelikan has the final say and on Thursday refused to extradite them.

The three were arrested in Prague 2014 while allegedly trying to sell weapons to undercover U.S. law enforcement agents who pretended to be from a Colombian terrorist group.

"We are dismayed by the Czech government decision to release Ali Fayad and Khaled El Merebi," the embassy said in a statement.

Jeff Desjardins, Visual Capitalist

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon has weathered five years of Middle Eastern turmoil remarkably well but its stability should not be taken for granted and it needs long-term financial help to cope with a huge number of Syrian refugees, a senior U.N. official said.

U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Sigrid Kaag, speaking before a Syria donors’ conference in London, said on Wednesday that the refugee crisis must be recognized as long-term and the response must move beyond meeting humanitarian needs.

"Our big message is really the need for sustainable, long-term predictable financing, and very much a focus on not only humanitarian but also what we call stabilization support … job creation," Kaag told Reuters.

Reuters

Lebanon’s army killed six gunmen and arrested 16 suspected militants, including a commander from the Islamic State group, in a raid in the town of Arsal near the border with Syria on Wednesday, it said.

An army statement said soldiers carried out a special operation against what it called a terrorist cell that was planning to attack army posts and kidnap people in Arsal.

Another army unit stormed an IS-run field hospital in the same area and detained 16 militants, it said, including a man named Ahmad Noun who was described as a "dangerous terrorist".

A security source said earlier that the army had arrested Abu Bakr al-Raqqawi, a local commander of the Islamic State group, and three high profile insurgents. It was not immediately clear if Raqqawi was Noun’s nom de guerre.

VOA – Reuters

BEIRUT—

Beirut stinks. And now it’s getting dangerous.

Six months ago, Lebanon’s dysfunctional government shut the main landfill site for garbage from the capital, without providing an alternative.

Since then, rubbish collection has halted and festering trash has piled up in the city streets, causing what researchers and campaigners now say is a public health emergency.

Officials say they will resolve the crisis by paying a foreign company to ship rubbish abroad, although even the minister in charge calls the plan "crazy."

Activists say it is proof that a governing system, set up 25 years ago to share power among feuding sectarian groups and end a multisided civil war, has become so inefficient and corrupt that it is no longer capable of providing even basic services.

Halim Shebaya

Huffington Post

In potentially the most abrupt U-turn in Lebanese politics since the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding in February 2006 between Hizbullah’s Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the Free Patriotic Movement’s former-PM General Michel Aoun, Lebanese Forces leader Dr. Samir Geagea stunned his March 14 allies by endorsing (see video below) Aoun’s nomination for the Lebanese Presidency on the 20th of January 2016.

Lebanon has been without a President since May 2014. As per Lebanese custom, the President should be Maronite (Eastern Catholic) and is elected by the convening of Parliament with a minimum of a two-thirds quorum. This quorum has been unavailable since Aoun (backed by March 8 coalition) has refused to send his parliamentary bloc without the assurance that he – or someone he nominates – is elected as President.

by Francesca Fearon