JEAN-YVES LE DRIAN: YOU HAVE NO PLACE AMONG THEM..!

By General Monzer El Ayoubi *

 

 

Translation: Dr. Pierre A. Sarkis

 

Wednesday evening, the plane of French Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian will land on the third runway 35/17 at Rafik Hariri International Airport of Beirut, where he will head directly to the French Embassy, the “Palace of Pines”, in preparation for the start of his meetings with Lebanese officials tomorrow morning.  This has been the news of the hour since late last week.  

 

All the respect for the French Minister, but it is necessary to say on the impersonation of advice of a political PCR, that it is not important at all whom he will or will not meet, or boycott helpless officials or castrated, non-transient figures in the skies of the country.  This is not to diminish his presence from the perspective of political negativity or blind opposition, because the language of logic and facts proves that widespread tampering is practiced by conviction and not through unintentional straying or any wrong committed. It is because the anchors of power and the system, in addition to a large part of the political party apparatus coated with sectarianism and feudalism and allied subsequently with 1% of the financial and oligarchical clique, still apply the same approach of suffocating the country, unconvinced that their end is getting nearer, sooner or later, forgetting their national or moral duties at least in maintaining the state with its honest, transparent administration and resources, maintaining people’s blissful lives and society in its distinctive fabric, and thus, they confirm their proven deliberate failure.

 

Since the beginning of the French initiative, which came 24 hours after the massive and unprecedented explosion of the stored ammonium nitrate inside the famous hangar number 12 in the port of Beirut, and the painful numbers of the fallen innocent victims along with the horrible destruction of the Capital, which prompted French President Emanuel Macron to make his first visit to Beirut in emotional, sentimental and humanitarian solidarity, where he expressed then and throughout his visit, a serious essential desire to form a prominent government to save the country.  He stated his country’s desire to extend a helping hand and any needed assistance, but the intransigence of self-interests remained the practiced course in total disregard to people’s interests, or to any instructive morality of the disaster that befell them.

Weeks later, President Macron repeated his second pragmatic visit, against the backdrop of the stalling and evasion by the political actors in implementing what was known as the “French rescue initiative.”  Warning of a horrendous fall, he declared that discipline, or at least reprimand, is a clause listed on the Elysee’s agenda that can be adopted.  However, and in vain, the rebellion against the tragic reality persisted.  Since then, the issue has become like an “oil jug” (a merry-go-round development), as the political climate has been hanging on a tightrope between the party which commissioned and the party entitled to form the new government, on the referral of two axes in a waste of credit for the salvation of the country and the tragedy of its people and their suffering, considering that neither time, nor halting the bleeding has any value for “when you close one wound another one gushes.”

 

From another perspective, French concern for the symbolic homeland and its people and the need to rescue them, was guaranteed without denying French geopolitical interests which falls in the category of “halal” (permissible), because of a preclusion to the decision of implicit hegemony or the confiscation of any national sovereignty judgement. During successive visits, French officials have urged all parties, loyalists and opposition, sovereign or reluctant, neutral or dissociated, to transcend differences over stakes or rights and abandon personal grudges and commitments to external parties.  The urge evolved into raising the red flag in a rare threat of imposing French-European sanctions, as the country approaches the moment of a devastating collision after the fall, but “to whom do you read your psalms” (meaning talking to deaf people).

 

On another level, one cannot ignore the objectives of the visit of French Minister Le Drian which is to enrich French political presence, which had started to gradually shrink on the Lebanese scene after all the pursuit, not only with the desire or will of his friends, but because of the regional and international rush to ascend in an individual recital for every party or country on two accounts:  the first is related to the strategic location of Lebanon and the sources of energy (oil and gas) stored in its sea, which are prone for investment for decades to come; the second is the strategic force (the weapons of Hizbollah) facing the Israeli enemy and the highly-accurate rockets within its arsenal, which established its ability to enforce a balanced deterrence.  In parallel, and with warnings already issued in previous articles about the sinking of the French initiative in the quagmire of Lebanese political absurdity and non-belonging, the bet remained probable in the scalping of crocodile skin selling it by weight not quality, for the local or international judiciary arose to prevent people from walking barefooted and nude.  

 

The persistent question remained:  How did the French initiative sink in the gibberish, and why?  Excessive self-confidence has sometimes been a reason for complicity or failure, especially when dealing with such a Lebanese political order.  Shrewd, they prepare poison without weighing the quantity, to ensure the effectiveness of the antidote with the standard being the volume of their interests.  If onlookers and the international community believe that they are capable of inhibiting, domesticating or punishing them, ignorance is bliss.  Even if Lebanese officials wilt, they are capable of mastering the art of petting elephants.  How can they not when they have been rooted in positions, devoured the rewards, contemporized world leaders and politics of people of courtesy who have come after and departed for decades, but as for them, they remained.  

 

Internally, they are disorderly using smoke bombs of different types:  laws, decrees, parliamentary committees, looted money and its recovery, ration cards, lifting economic subsidies, Captagon drug pills, the search for the scanner systems with their reconnaissance over the rugged mountain border territories, electricity, pollution, commitments, etc… Every time a file is opened another one is overlooked with the usual adulteration.  Externally, in the regional and international arena, they engage everybody behind the scene throwing arrows sometimes, and at other times, they ask for bandages, and they are the archers.  They always take advantage of the circumstances and events with unbored diligence, and if they fail to make them, they succeed in dyeing them with their own colors with grey as the foundation.

 

Wherever you look, you find them; in Vienna, talks regarding the nuclear deal is about to succeed and its repercussions in Lebanon are felt by some harvest pickers; the US sanctions are a deep hit in the chest of one party and a cure for another; the US Caesar Law imposed on Syria has fallen dizzy around its purpose, and its provisions were burned by allowed smuggling.  They tempt Russian non-emerging presence when necessary, in order to face another international presence “for fear of impoverishment” in the sanctions, then they sell the bear skin at the IPC Refinery (Iraqi Petroleum Company) in Tripoli or wherever available.  They engage the French with his German ally distributing gibberish stakes in communications or electricity; they flirt with an invitation to China to sit on the Beirut port dining table to tease the American, and then beg the latter for loyalty in supporting the national army under the pretext of a phantom strife. They use foreplay with the Syrian at the borders.  They compete for Saudi friendship using Persian language sometimes, and Turkish language at other times.  They buy off the fall of Ma’rib (a town under the legitimate government of Yemen supported by Saudi Arabia and surrounded by Houthi rebels supported by Iran) and reap the benefits of a naught victory for anyone in Yemen.  And that is how the rage spins.

 

In conclusion, the only solution is for them to leave, and if their departure or deportation is an unthinkable, unattainable redemption, the friendly French Minister should leave, if he arrives.  Honestly, you will swiftly return to Paris.  You will not find any frightened doves in its nests but foxes that practice ugly reprehensible cunningness from its dens.  As for the laudable cunning, people’s hopes lie in the faith in God, a desperate, sincere repentance not out of despair from France.  The Almighty said:  they plot, and God plots, and God is the best of the plotters (Surat Al-Anfal from the Koran).  

 

Beirut,20.05.2021

*Scholar in Security and Strategic Affairs