Jihad al-Bina's Reconstruction Terrorism
Interview
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(page 4 of 6) What evidence is there to support this allegation against the CIA? We have intelligence pointing the finger to the CIA … The CIA had eluded later to executing this operation (footnote 3). With this backdrop of so much physical destruction and the Lebanese government’s dereliction of duty to rebuild and repair the damage—in this and almost all other cases of destruction wrought upon towns and villages by Israel since 1978 (footnote 4)—we felt that it was incumbent upon us as a group of civilian engineers to volunteer and to answer the call of civic duty, especially when no other official body really cared. I am an industrial engineer by training; I had obtained a college degree in Algeria before going to the U.S. for advanced studies. I was single at the time and had the opportunity to settle down and lead a happy life in America. But I was someone who constantly carried the travails of my home country in my mind. Later, in 1988, I returned to Lebanon and I chose to volunteer with other engineers in what eventually became JaB. Back in the early 80s, Amine Gemayel’s government had allied itself with the anti-progressive Arab regimes, effectively and collectively serving as mere satellites in the American orbit. His administration, as well as subsequent ones in Lebanon, would not live up to their responsibility as a national government to support the needs of areas resisting the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon or the needs of other abandoned areas in the Hermel, the Bekaa Valley or the southern suburb of Beirut. For example, the Lebanese government has historically neglected water-irrigation projects to the detriment of thousands of farmers in the south; this is in a water-rich part of the country where untapped rivers flow directly into the Mediterranean without a single ounce used to irrigate agricultural land. As a result of economic hardship, brutal Israeli occupation and endless rounds of civil war, people flocked into Beirut and its southern suburbs to earn a living in the relative safety and vibrancy of the city’s urban commotion: 800,000 residents living in densely populated areas with inadequate or inexistent infrastructure and water. To this day, the southern suburb does not receive potable water from the city, except in the quarters of Bourj al-Barajneh and Mraijeh where an antiquated network of pipes is in place. Today JaB actually buys drinking water from the ministry in Beirut, stores it in large cisterns and distributes it to residents in the southern suburb. For political reasons, this part of the city—a human reservoir for the resistance against Israeli occupation—is evidently not allowed to access drinking water running through city pipes. The extent of political pressure and discrimination was starkly obvious when the city of Beirut constructed and ran a new water pipe from the Damour river right through the southern suburb in order to supply the city’s water needs. At the time, the Hariri government refused to make that water source accessible to residents in the southern suburb and refused to install an extension from the main pipes that were built right through the suburb. In such an atmosphere of unofficial sanctions and neglect, JaB’s mission has been to fill many of the gaps where the national government is either unable or unwilling to provide basic needs to a good percentage of the population. In the past our volunteer work included garbage collection, sewage repairs and maintenance of electrical grids so residents may have a minimum of public services. At the end of the civil war when the national government reactivated the work of municipalities, our mission transitioned from service provider to developer of social capacities of the various communities where we operated. For instance, JaB started building schools, hospitals, health clinics and cultural centers where none existed, as well as renovating damaged houses, mosques and churches after every Israeli assault on our towns and villages. This year we are planting 1 million trees supplied by the Syrian ministry of agriculture, in collaboration with various Lebanese municipalities. I am confident that we are literally the only NGO in Lebanon to provide engineering and development services on such a scale. We are often accused of operating as a “state within state.” But our detractors forget that we have operated in historically neglected areas, where a governance vacuum exists. Furthermore we collaborate with other Lebanese NGOs and institutions all over the country in sectors and markets, such as agriculture for example, where cooperation is needed, in order to create a direct bridge between the rural producer and the general consumer. JaB is an active member of civil society and our high energy, discipline and committed activism are sometimes misrepresented or inaccurately construed as a state within a state. So you’ve been operating in this development capacity since 1988, yet suddenly your identity as an organization changed to “terrorist” in 2007. Why today? Perhaps from the outset of the Israeli aggression in 2006, the U.S. administration took the front seat in achieving Israel’s goals. Condoleezza Rice announced that the creation of a new Middle East—read Israeli control of the Middle East—had to pass through Lebanon and the 2006 war against the Lebanese Resistance. This was not a traditional war: scorched earth in the form of wanton destruction of entire villages, towns and civilians (footnote 5). Israel and the U.S. bet all their chips on destroying the Resistance and its pillars of popular support, hoping that people would rise against it in disgust. They brought so much destruction assuming that residents of south Lebanon would be unable or would be reluctant to return to villages turned into mere rubble and to lands carpeted with 4 million cluster bombs. Israel and the U.S. were hoping to sow the seeds of popular dissatisfaction with the Lebanese Resistance. The other objective was to depopulate the region south of the Litani river in order to create a natural shield for Israel’s north. JaB was in direct contact with international organizations to facilitate the delivery of relief operations and material during the war. As an organization of 300 engineers (plus 900 volunteers in times of crisis), we later assumed the daunting task of helping hundreds of thousands of the internally displaced return to their destroyed towns from the first day of cessation of hostilities: rubble removal, road clearance, engineering the transportation for a massive return of people, collecting donations, recruiting volunteers for community services, technical damage assessment house by house, tallying the lists of financial reimbursement to owners of damaged real estate, closely coordinating relief efforts with local and international organizations, including UNDP, ESCWA and EU, linking such groups with hundreds of municipalities and agricultural co-ops in the south, and most importantly, announcing and executing the task of rebuilding what the Israeli war machine had destroyed. We lived up to our commitments. These were the reasons for pinning JaB with the “terrorist” label. We were wholeheartedly there for our popular base during difficult times in the aftermath of the war. We disrupted the Israeli and American agenda of demoralizing our people and attempting to turn Lebanon’s Shi’a population into refugees. Footnote 3: Mohamad Hussein Fadlallah is a spiritual Shi’a authority in Lebanon. On 27 Sept. 1987, the New York Times reported that “Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, writes that the 1985 operation - which failed to kill the Shiite leader but left 62 others dead -was one of three Saudi-sponsored operations arranged by [William J. Casey, the former Director of Central Intelligence,] that circumvented normal C.I.A. procedures (…). American officials said recently that a car bomb attack against Sheik Fadlallah was carried out by operatives linked to Lebanese Christian security forces. The officials said they were part of a unit that had received some training from the C.I.A. earlier that year while the Administration considered plans to create a covert unit for so-called pre-emptive actions against terrorism (…). [Woodward’s] book says Saudi Arabia contributed a total of $15 million for the car bombing and for the covert effort in Chad and the attempt to undermine the Italian Communists.” According to wikipedia.org, “On 8 March 1985, a car bomb exploded 9-45 metres from the house of Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon, in a failed assassination attempt. The bombing, later discovered to be the work of CIA-trained Lebanese mercenaries, killed more than 80 people and injured 200… The bomb explosion, equivalent to 440 lbs of dynamite…killed worshippers leaving Sabbath services at an adjacent mosque, and destroyed two 7-storey apartment buildings and a cinema…Initially, Fadlallah blamed Israel for the attack, but later accepted evidence that revealed the American Central Intelligence Agency had sponsored the attack, as they had claimed Fadlallah had given support to the Beirut barracks bombing, in which hundreds of American and French soldiers were killed…Reporter Bob Woodward charged that CIA director William Casey had been responsible, receiving funding from Saudi Arabia, for the attack. Fadlallah would later suggest the amount $3,000,000 as the price that had been offered by the Saudis, for Casey to arrange the bombing…The U.S. National Security Advisor, Robert McFarlane admitted that those responsible for the bomb may have had American training, but that they were “rogue operative(s)” operating without CIA approval. Former Lebanese warlord and statesman Elie Hobeika was fingered as one of those likely responsible for the actual operation.” (return to corresponding paragraph) Footnote 4: According to the UNIFIL page on un.org, “Israeli forces invaded Lebanon on the night of 14/15 March” 1978 in response to a commando attack in Israel by the PLO on 11 March. “In a few days [Israel] occupied the entire southern part of [Lebanon] except for the city of Tyre and its surrounding area.” (return to corresponding paragraph) Footnote 5: On 13 July 2006 the Guardian reported that “Israel’s army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, said his military would target infrastructure and ‘turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years,’ ” as Israel prepared to launch a ground and air assault on Lebanon. (return to corresponding paragraph) |
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