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 […]

  IRBIL, Iraq — With extremists flying the black flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham less than an hour down the road, the future of one of the last Christian communities in the Middle East is at grave risk of assimilation or annihilation. An estimated 100,000 Iraqi Christians fled the Plain of […]

by: Thomas Joscelyn & Oren Adaki, The Long War Journal

The Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, has released a video and a series of photos documenting its recent operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The video has since been removed by YouTube, and featured footage from Al Nusrah’s raid on a Hezbollah outpost in the town of Brital, which is close to the border with Syria. In text displayed during the video, the al Qaeda group claims its fighters killed 11 Hezbollah jihadists wounded tens of others, and forced the remaining Hezbollah forces to flee.

Al Nusrah says its fighters captured a variety of weaponry, including an American-made rocket launcher. And the group also claims that only one of its members was killed and one other wounded during the raid. Skirmishes also took place elsewhere inside Lebanon. And the total number of Hezbollah casualties from this engagement varies greatly in the reporting, with some reports saying that 10 Hebollah fighters were killed.

Hezbollah sources, meanwhile, have given their version of events to the press. Citing a "person close to Hezbollah," Reuters reports that at least 16 Nusrah Front fighters were killed. While Hezbollah temporarily lost control of the outpost, Hezbollah sources say, Al Nusrah’s fighters were pushed back into Syria.

By Warren Singh-Bartlett

http://www.singhbartlett.com/news/2014/10/4/why-beirut-really-matters

For the last few days, a pleasant little story on VICE by Mary von Aue has been doing the rounds in Beirut. Entitled ‘Fighting for the Right to Party’, it’s essentially an interview with Yousef Harati, one of the city’s more interesting movers and shakers on the nightlife scene.

Essentially, von Aue’s article posits that in a country floundering under the weight of more than 1 million Syrian refugees (von Aue, for some reason, puts that figure at 800,000) and which is next door to a civil war, the Islamic State (almost) and Israel

Of course, it’s elicited howls of delight and horror, as well as the usual self-loathing accusations that the Lebanese are one nation under amnesia. If, for me, there is any sense of unease in reading it, that’s because the story is an old one and a favourite American trope, to boot. Beirut as the centre of decadence, the city that danced even as the bombs dropped, has been rehashed in assorted American and European publications at least once a year since I got here. The emergence of the IS just adds a new sexy spin.

  Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi attended at the Vatican on Sunday a landmark two-week synod of bishops on the family. Pope Francis opened the synod of bishops from around the world, which will review Church teaching on the family and marriage. The bishops and a small number of lay figures will spend the next two […]

  BEIRUT: Lebanon is considering using a Saudi grant to buy much needed weapons and equipment from Moscow to bolster its Army amid a jihadist threat, Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk has said. “There are talks on buying Russian arms and special equipment by Lebanon,” the World Tribune quoted Machnouk as saying during his visit to […]

  ATICAN CITY — The Vatican, once again backing war to stop the ruthless Islamic State, is demanding that Christians and other religious minorities have the right to return to their homes in Iraq and Syria. Pope Francis summoned Vatican ambassadors from across the region for three days of meetings. At the conclusion Saturday, they […]