The string of car bombings in Shia neighbourhoods in iraq last month was meant to send a message to Maliki to stop his support for Asad. They are being done by the same Sunni groups helping the Syrian opposition.
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As with the news of Iraqi's joining the fight -in this case too old news is now "breaking news" or "specials".
Hizbollah debates dropping support for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad via @Telegraph
http://t.co/GR0AcEyh
The giant banner with a portrait of Bashar al-Assad, strung across a busy street in South Beirut, proclaimed loyalty to the Syrian president — and cursed his enemies.
“Those who hate the Lion of Syria are sons of bitches,” it read, in Arabic slang with a play on the meaning of the Assad name.
Elsewhere in the Arab world he may be hated as a bloody tyrant, but in Hizbollah’s South Beirut stronghold Mr Assad is still a hero.
A couple of streets away, the British hostage Terry Waite was held captive for four years until his release in 1991, and nearby is the site of the notorious massacre of Sabra and Shatila where perhaps as many as 3500 people were murdered by pro-Israeli militias in 1982.
Hizbollah’s reclusive leader Hassan Nasrallah, the undisputed head of Lebanon’s Shia Muslims, lives nearby in a heavily guarded apartment complex. Hizbollah’s own police force, in khaki fatigues, patrol the streets, which are noticeably more crowded and scruffier than in the centre of Beirut with its nightclubs and fashionable shops.
Hizbollah - “the party of God” - needed help from neighbouring Syria to become the most powerful force in Lebanese politics, and it could always depend on the ruling family in Damascus during its wars with Israel.
Now in Mr Assad’s time of need Lebanon’s Shias have mostly been loyal in return - providing logistical and moral support and even sending fighters into Syria’s civil war to kill his enemies.
But in Lebanon there are as many Christians and Sunni Muslims as there are Shia. Now, as doubts grow that Mr Assad will survive and Syria’s civil war begins to spread into Lebanon, The Sunday Telegraph has been told of secret arguments raging inside Hizbollah’s ranks about whether the time has come to stop backing Mr Assad.
To many in South Beirut, where Hizbollah runs hospitals, schools, and rubbish collections, and pays pensions to the families of slain fighters, that would be unthinkable.
“Bashar is a major backer of our resistance, and so we are for him,” said Ahmad Suleiman, 43, a burly Hizbollah loyalist.
Mr Suleiman’s house was blasted into rubble in an air strike during the bloody 2006 war with Israel that Hizbollah claims to have won; in 1996 his brother was killed by an Israeli tank shell, making him “a martyr” he says proudly. He can remember “arrogant” Israeli soldiers patrolling his streets during the invasion of Lebanon, when he was a boy — streets that are still scarred with bullets from that time.
“The resistance”, as Hizbollah is called by its supporters, relied on Syrian and Iranian weapons and training to fight the Israelis. A bond was thus forged between Damascus, Tehran and South Beirut that until now has always looked unbreakable.
Many Hizbollah supporters insist it is Assad who is the victim, not the opposition, and that he is worthy of their support.
“In Syria there are terrorist attacks, torture, killing and beheading, all done by the enemies of the regime,” Mr Suleiman said. “This is not a revolution like the one in Egypt. Ninety per cent of the Syrians support Bashar. He is a good man and he will survive.
“If it looks as if he is in real danger, we will send thousands of our men into Syria. And if America or Nato is stupid enough to intervene, we will be there defending Arab lands.”
There were reports of fresh fighting in Syria on Saturday, with opposition activists claiming Syrian artillery bombarded cities, in breach of a truce meant to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday. Both the government and rebels agreed a truce. Mohammed Doumany, an activist from the Damascus suburb of Douma, said he had counted 15 explosions in an hour and said at least two civilians had been killed. There were also reports of heavy fighting along the Syria-Turkey border.
Hizbollah has a private army, regarded as a terrorist organisation by the United States, which is much stronger than Lebanon’s national army - yet it is also inside Lebanon’s government as part of an uneasy arrangement of rival political parties.
Since it was founded in the 1980s it has built a reputation as a formidably disciplined organisation, tolerating no public dissent. But a year ago the rival Palestinian militant organisation Hamas, which controls Gaza, abandoned its support for Mr Assad. Now, insiders say, Hizbollah is engaged in a fierce debate behind closed doors over whether to follow suit.
“There are different points of view, with some saying that we should push for a settlement within Syria and not bank on Assad staying,” said one Lebanese with connections to senior Hizbollah circles.
Some Hizbollah members, including clerics, fear that their support for Mr Assad is dragging them into a dangerous fight with Sunni Arabs - the other side of Islam’s main sectarian divide - in Syria and Lebanon, he said.
They say it is now urgent to end their support for Mr Assad, so that a new relationship can be formed with whoever comes to power in Syria next.
“There is an awareness inside Iran and Hizbollah that they are going to have confrontation with the Sunnis, or are going to have to bridge the gap between them,” the source said. “The hardest topic is Syria. The future of Hizbollah and the Shia is directly related to the future of Syria. If Bashar is to be sacrificed, let’s sacrifice him and not Syria.”
The most dramatic sign of dissent within Hizbollah is the cancellation of a forthcoming party convention that is usually held every three years - the first time anybody can remember it being dropped. The official explanation is that it would be a security risk.
But a Shia politician from an important political family said: “They are not able to hold their convention because they are afraid they cannot agree on Syria.”
Disagreement is said to be strongest between civilian Hizbollah members, who are more likely to favour cutting links with Damascus, and its powerful military wing, trained and indoctrinated by Iran and still fiercely loyal to the Syrian regime.
“I have heard that the division is deep between the Lebanese branch of Hizbollah and the military. Hassan Nasrallah decided to cancel the convention,” said the source. “He was worried he would not be able to come up with a final resolution.”
Mr Nasrallah pledged his loyalty to the Damascus regime in public several times at the beginning of the crisis, but has shown much less enthusiasm about doing so recently.
“Nasrallah is anxious,” said one observer of the South Beirut political scene. “At every crossroads he watches closely what is happening.”
Car bombings and clashes between militias, alarming signs that Syria’s violent struggle is spreading to Lebanon, have forced many of his followers to wonder where their involvement with Mr Assad is leading them.
Dozens of Lebanese have died in fighting between pro- and anti-Assad factions in Lebanon’s cities this year, and the car bomb assassination nine days ago of the country’s spy chief, who was one of Syria’s biggest enemies in Beirut, brought back frightening memories of Lebanon’s own 15-year-long civil war.
Beyond Lebanon, Hizbollah’s prestige, once sky-high, now looks tarnished. Instead of being praised among Arabs for standing up to Israel, it is seen by many as the lackey of a bloodstained dictator.
When Hamas abandoned its support for Syria, under pressure from Palestinians appalled by the regime’s slaughter, Ismail Haniya, its leader in Gaza, dramatically announced it during Friday prayers in Cairo. “I salute the Syrian people who seek freedom, democracy and reform,” he said. There were calls of “No Hizbollah and no Iran” from the crowd.
For sticking with the Damascus regime, Hizbollah has been criticised by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf States.
Its support for the Assad regime was “an obvious strategic mistake”, said Abdel-Halim Qandil, the co-founder of the new left-of-centre Egyptian political party Kefaya (Enough). “It would have been better to be neutral or to keep silent,” he said.
There is growing unease even among Hizbollah’s grass-roots supporters in its political heartlands of South Beirut, and speculation that it will lose out politically as well.
“My mother has always voted for Hizbollah, but she has seen the television pictures of dead children in Syria and she is horrified,” said one Hizbollah supporter. “Of course she is behind the resistance. But for the first time in her life I think she may not vote for them in the next election.”
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Potsherd with Tamil-Brahmi script found in Oman
Discovery has opened new chapter in understanding maritime trade of Indian Ocean countries, say historians
A Tamil-Brahmi script inscribed on a potsherd, which was found at the Khor Rori area in Oman, has come to light now. The script reads “nantai kiran” and it can be dated to first century CE, that is, 1900 years before the present. The discovery in the ancient city of Sumhuram has opened a new chapter in understanding the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean countries, according to specialists in history.
It was by chance that the potsherd was sighted. Alexia Pavan, an Italian archaeologist, had displayed the potsherd during an international ceramic workshop on “The Indian Ocean Trade and the Archaeology of Technology at Pattanam in Kerala” held in September in Kochi. P.J. Cherian, Director, Kerala Council of Historical Research (KCHR), and Roberta Tomber of the British Museum, London, had jointly organised the workshop. Pottery from several Indian Ocean countries was on display during the workshop. K. Rajan, Professor, Department of History, Pondicherry University, D. Dayalan, Regional Director, Archaeological Survey of India, and V. Selvakumar, Head of the Department of Epigraphy and Archaeology, Tamil University, Thanjavur, spotted the potsherd displayed by Dr. Pavan.
The Italian Mission to Oman (IMTO) had found this potsherd during its second archaeological excavation in 2006 in the Khor Rori area. The Director of the excavation was Alessandra Avanzini and Dr. Pavan was part of the team. Since 1997, the Mission of University of Pisa, forming part of the IMTO, has been working in Oman in two sites: Sumhuram in Khor Rori and Salut in Nizwa.
Personal name
The potsherd was found in a residential area of Sumhuram city. Dr. Pavan said it was part of a lid made by reusing the shoulder of an amphora. Soot traces visible along the external ridge suggest the use of the lid for a cooking pot. The sherd was discovered in a layer mixed with a few pottery pieces and animal bones, “which [layer] corresponds to one of the most important constructional phase of the city, to be dated to the first century CE,” she said. So the sherd could be dated to first century CE or a little earlier. There was so much of Indian material, including beads, coins and pottery, discovered during the excavation that it was important to show the relationship between India and the southern coast of Oman, she added.
The script “nantai kiran,” signifying a personal name, has two components, Dr. Rajan said. The first part “[n] antai” is an honorific suffix to the name of an elderly person. For instance, “kulantai-campan,” “antai asutan,” “korrantai” and so on found in Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions could be cited. The second component “Kiran” also stands for a personal name. More than 20 poets of the Tamil Sangam age [circa third century BCE to third century CE] have “kiran” as part of their personal names. “Thus, the broken piece of the pot carries the personal name of an important trader who commanded a high regard in the trading community,” Dr. Rajan argued.
It was generally believed that India’s contact with the Mediterranean world began with the Roman trade and much of the studies were concentrated on the Red Sea ports such as Quseir al-Qadim and Berenike, both in Egypt. While the excavation at Quseir al-Qadim yielded potsherds with the Tamil-Brahmi texts reading “kanan,” “catan” and “panai ori,” the one found at Berenike was engraved with the Tamil-Brahmi script “korrapuman.” The latest discovery in Oman was significant as it opened a new avenue in understanding the impact of the Indian Ocean trade, particularly on the west coast of the peninsular India, Dr. Rajan said. The region was known for frankincense and there was a possibility that trade in horses could also have taken place in these ports. (Frankincense is an aromatic gum resin used for burning as incense).
“Excavations by the University of Pisa have confirmed Sumhuram’s link with the ancient frankincense route and its cultural links with the frankincense-based kingdoms in southern Arabia,” Dr. Rajan said.
In the context of the advanced scholarship available on Tamil-Brahmi, estimated Dr. Cherian, this epigraphic evidence from Khor Rori had a great significance. “To the best of my knowledge, Khor Rori is the first South Arabian site to yield epigraphic evidence of the early historic phase [that is, when written records began].” Earlier, in the Mediterranean maritime trade network, only Myos Hormos and Berenike (on the Red Sea coast of Egypt) and a few sites in Sri Lanka had produced Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions outside India.
The importance of Khor Rori rested on the fact that it was an important pre-Islamic port-city in the ancient Indian Ocean exchanges between the Mediterranean region and India, Dr. Cherian said. The port of Sumhuram could be dated to circa third century BCE to fourth century ACE. This site could be crucial in tracing the maritime history of the Red Sea, the South Arabian and the Mesopotamian coasts and their hinterlands which could have played a pivotal role in the long-distance maritime trade between Tamilakam and the Mediterranean between the first century BCE and the fourth century CE, he added.
“It is unfortunate that the geographical and the cultural significance of the South Arabian region and its links with ancient south India has not been properly studied for various reasons,” said Dr. Cherian, who recently did field studies in Oman including at Sumhuram (Khor Rori) and the nearby Al Baleed sites. The Euro-centric perspectives that became dominant after the Roman Empire seem to have erased more history than they probably produced anew. In the absence of textual evidence for the early historic period, he said, archaeological evidence and to some extent, anthropological sources such as myths were the available means to retrieve such lost histories.
Dr. Cherian added: “This artefact with a post-firing Tamil-Brahmi script is, therefore, a find with a dual significance both as material and textual evidence. The challenge now is to seek associated archaeological finds from elsewhere, especially peninsular India.”
Brisk trade activity
The substantial quantity — the largest-ever assemblage from any Indian site — of 3,384 torpedo jar fragments and 1,720 turquoise glazed pottery from Pattanam suggested the brisk trade activity between Tamilakam and the South Arabian regions. (The KCHR, in association with other agencies has been excavating the Pattanam site, near Ernakulam, from 2007. Archaeologists feel that Pattanam could be Muziris/Muciri, which was a flourishing port on the west coast during the Tamil Sangam age, which coincided with the classical period in the West). “The presence of frankincense crumbs in almost all trenches at Pattanam is yet another indication of the site’s connection with South Arabia, including Khor Rori and the Al Baleed region, famed as the ‘land of incense’,” Dr. Cherian said.
Nice try again.