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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 28-Dec-2013
28-Dec-13 World View -- Lebanon faces new chaos after car bombing in heart of Beirut

Web Log - December, 2013

28-Dec-13 World View -- Lebanon faces new chaos after car bombing in heart of Beirut

The spectacular fall of North Korea's number two leader

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Lebanon faces new chaos after car bombing in heart of Beirut
The spectacular fall of North Korea's number two leader

Lebanon faces new chaos after car bombing in heart of Beirut

Car bombing in Beirut on Friday (Daily Star)

Car bombing in Beirut on Friday (Daily Star)

Lebanese people were sent shivering again on Friday when a massive car bomb exploded in the heart of downtown Beirut, killing six people, including Mohammad Shatah, a leading moderate Sunni leader in Lebanon's government, and injuring at least 70. Shatah was extremely critical of government in Syria and of Hezbollah, and it's thought one of those two perpetrated the bombing.

The death of Shatah is thought to mark the end of Sunni moderation. There have been several tit-for-tat bombings in Lebanon, some targeting assets of the Shia terrorist organization Hezbollah, and the others targeting assets of Future Movement, the leading Sunni organization, led by Saad Hariri, whose own father was killed in 2005. (See "Massive Beirut explosion killing Rafiq Hariri puts Lebanon into state of shock" from 2005.) Possibly by coincidence, or possibly not, the United Nations is just about to begin an investigation into the 2005 bombing which is expected to show that the assassination was carried out by Syria and Hezbollah. Saad Hariri and Mohammad Shatah were Sunni advocates of moderation, but the violent death on Friday of Shatah may end this moderation and lead to open conflict between the Sunni and Shia factions in Lebanon.

The Syria conflict began in 2011, starting with peaceful anti-government protesters. Then Syria's genocidal monster Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad ordered his army to start shooting innocent protesters, bombing and flattening neighborhoods where innocent people were living, launching missiles into children's dormitories and bedrooms, raping, torturing, mutilating and massacring innocent women and children on a large scale, particularly targeting Sunnis.

This war quickly began to spill over into Lebanon, but it was mostly confined to the city of Tripoli in north Lebanon, on the border with Syria, where Sunni and Shia neighborhoods held frequent gunfights with each other.

However, Lebanon's chaos started to get dramatically worse on April 30, when Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallad gave a televised speech committing Hezbollah's soldiers to enter Syria and fight on the side of al-Assad's army (See "27-Sep-13 World View -- How Hezbollah's reluctant foray into Syria changed the Mideast")

Since that time, the sectarian fighting has come closer and closer to Beirut, and in the couple of months has particularly targeted the respected heartlands of the Sunni and Shia political organizations in downtown Beirut. Daily Star (Beirut) and LA Times

The spectacular fall of North Korea's number two leader

The recent spectacular North Korean saga, where the child dictator Kim Jong-un very publicly accused Jang Song-thaek, his uncle and the country's number two leader, of sabotaging the regime, and then executing him has left many outsiders guessing how this could have happened. According to an Indian analysis, there are several reasons:

Jang Song-thaek was driving a government reorganization that would put the military under party control, after the Chinese model. The military elites looked for an opportunity to sabotage him, and they succeeded.

Kim Jong-un was the youngest son of Kim Jong-il, and not ready to assume power. When Jong-il became ill in 2008, he working with Jang to prepare the way for a smooth succession for Jong-un, and that was successful. However, it was always pretty clear that Jang never held Kim Jong-un in very high esteem, causing the latter to feel overshadowed by Jang.

Jang's career in government goes back to 1972, when he married Kim Jong-il's sister. Jang held a variety of government positions, and was more widely respected throughout the government than Kim Jong-un. He instituted a number of economic reforms, many of which were opposed by the military.

It has also been reported that Jang Song-thaek has some unspecified connection to Kim Jong-un's wife, Ri Sol-ju, and it was not a comfortable fact for Kim Jong-un.

Kim Jong-un needs a core group of supporters in the North Korean elites, as his father and grandfather had, who will be loyal under all circumstances. Jang enjoyed a wide network of North Korean elites, and many of Jang's associates have been executed as well. Without Jang, there is no core group to support Kim Jong-un, leaving the child dictator vulnerable to a coup or, at the very least, unable to deal with the contest between the political and military elites of the country. Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS - India)

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Dec-13 World View -- Lebanon faces new chaos after car bombing in heart of Beirut thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (28-Dec-2013) Permanent Link
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Lebanon faces new chaos after car bombing in heart of Beirut

The spectacular fall of North Korea's number two leader

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 28-Dec-2013
28-Dec-13 World View -- Lebanon faces new chaos after car bombing in heart of Beirut