BEIRUT — Well, Beirut is now in a state of ner­vous wait­ing… Wait­ing for some­thing, any­thing to hap­pen. Lahoud fin­ished out his term last night with all the pomp and cir­cum­stance he could muster. Too bad he couldn’t muster any local politi­cians to see him off, so despised he’s become. But before he left office, he may have put Lebanon under mil­i­tary con­trol after he declared a state of emer­gency.
Or did he? Some com­men­ta­tors are not­ing that his lan­guage — [“There are con­di­tions and risks on the ground that could lead to a state of emergency”](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7110202.stm) — doesn’t actu­ally do any­thing more than reit­er­ate the cur­rent secu­rity sta­tus quo. The Army has already been respon­si­ble for secu­rity in Lebanon since an Inte­rior Min­istry deci­sion about six months ago.
And there’s been no upris­ing by Hezbol­lah, Aoun seems to be keep­ing his head down and Siniora’s gov­ern­ment is still around. Michel Suleiman, com­man­der of the Army, has pledged to fol­low the orders of the cab­i­net. Sure doesn’t sound like a mil­i­tary takeover to me.
What it sounds like is peo­ple wait­ing to see what hap­pens with Syria in Annapo­lis. If the Golan is put on the agenda, and Syria gets some for­ward momen­tum from Israel, then things might very well ease up here. I am work­ing on a col­umn explain­ing this dynamic for [Spot-on](http://www.spot-on.com), which should be up tomor­row. Until then, let’s hope no one does any­thing stu­pid here. The atmos­phere is a tight as a garrote.

BEIRUT — Michel Aoun threw a fast­ball on the eve of the last day of Emile Lahoud’s term, propos­ing an inter­est­ing ini­tia­tive to break the dead­lock.
I’m still get­ting trans­la­tion, but it appears that he will with­draw his can­di­dacy for the pres­i­dency — which he has claimed as his “right” — but he will nom­i­nate a can­di­date who is not part of the his Free Patri­otic Move­ment bloc. This pres­i­dent would uphold his agree­ment with Hezbol­lah over its arms. (Aoun believes only his Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with the Party of God pro­tects the Shi’ite mili­tia from a mil­i­tary attack.)
Saad Hariri, leader of the Future Move­ment and the pro-Western bloc in the gov­ern­ment, should in turn nom­i­nate a prime min­is­ter who is not part of the major­ity bloc, but who would sup­port the inter­na­tional tri­bunal inves­ti­gat­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Saad’s father, Rafik Hariri. The tri­bunal is bit­terly opposed by Syria and its allies in Lebanon.
There was also some­thing about the major­ity would get 55 per­cent of the cab­i­net and the oppo­si­tion would get 45 per­cent — includ­ing two “sov­er­eign” min­istries. That gives it veto power. That won’t play well, prob­a­bly.
What’s most inter­est­ing is that Aoun made this ini­tia­tive pub­licly, in a press con­fer­ence, rather than the usual under-the-table man­ner of Lebanese politi­cians.
Quck reax analy­sis: This allows Hezbol­lah to accept another can­di­date other than Aoun, who was report­edly giv­ing Hezbol­lah and even Syria headaches. So I think Aoun has been made to real­ize he doesn’t have nearly the amount of sup­port among his allies or even among the Chris­tians he thought he did, and he was becom­ing an obsta­cle to get­ting Hezbol­lah out of the cor­ner it had painted itself into. Because make no doubt: this ini­tia­tive wouldn’t have gone for­ward with­out Syria’s bless­ing. It does allows Aoun to save some face. Maybe it will keep every­one happy until the next cri­sis.
In short, this is move­ment for­ward in a coun­try where dead­lock has been the order of the day for months.
Your play, March 14.
**UPDATE:** Hariri has rejected Aoun’s pro­posal and called for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to gather for a vote tomor­row. Hezbol­lah and its allies have said they will boy­cott any ses­sion, mean­ing March 14 could be head­ing for a 50+1 vote. This could lead to a coup, two rival gov­ern­ments, street fight­ing and a host of prob­lems. This could be game on.

You may notice things look a lit­tle dif­fer­ent around here. I finally found some free time (and energy) to fix this damn blog, which had been nag­ging at me for a while now.
Gone is the old design — but enough remains that you should still feel com­fort­able. Com­ments are back again, so yay, more spam in the com­ments. Hope­fully you all will make use of them.
There are still some tweaks and other lit­tle things going on, so kick the tires. If you find some­thing that doesn’t work or look right, [drop me a line](mailto:chris@back-to-iraq.com?subject=That’s messed up, man). In the mean­time, I’m get­ting ready to get mar­ried, so Decem­ber ain’t going to be very inter­est­ing, I’m afraid. But 2008 is a new life, a new wife and all that, so things can only get bet­ter, right?

Think this blog is all about Iraq and Lebanon? Fear not, Afghanistan gets a lit­tle time, too, and I received this let­ter from reader Bob who wanted to draw atten­tion to a real prob­lem over there.

I have a son in the US Army. He spent a year in Afghanistan remov­ing land­mines and IEDs. He’s now in Iraq patrolling lit­tle vil­lages north of Bagh­dad. Through his deploy­ment in Afghanistan, I dis­cov­ered a 6 week con­sult­ing job in Kabul, help­ing launch an edu­ca­tional TV net­work there in 2005. I’ve kept in touch with sev­eral of the staff who have received very seri­ous death threats, and am try­ing to help them from the US. I spon­sored one jour­nal­ist who had to flee for his life to come to the US on a stu­dent visa. After a year, we got him rec­om­mended for polit­i­cal asy­lum.
Another, [Amin Wahidi](http://www.aminwahidi.blogspot.com) went to the Venice Film Fes­ti­val, but received threats that cul­mi­nated in “we’ll meet you plane with a sui­cide bomber when you come back to Kabul.” Italy granted him refugee sta­tus for 6 months, but we’re try­ing to get him into the US to go to school.

Amin’s story is cer­tainly har­row­ing. He’s a 25-year-old jour­nal­ist, film­maker and free-speech advo­cate from Kabul, who is liv­ing the deep­en­ing cycle of vio­lence in Afghanistan. It’s remind­ing many of life under the Tal­iban, when jour­nal­ists faced vio­lence and cen­sor­ship. Today, some of that is com­ing from the Afghanistan gov­ern­ment, Bob writes. “They have been threat­ened, arrested, jailed, kid­napped, had their stu­dios van­dal­ized, and been beaten.“
Sev­eral young media pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing women, have been killed. This year, two have been mur­dered, caus­ing the few edu­cated and cre­ative peo­ple to flee Afghanistan. It sounds eerily sim­i­lar to what’s hap­pen­ing in Iraq.
And the [Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ist backs him up](http://www.cpj.org/attacks06/asia06/afg06.html). Things have been get­ting worse for every­one in Afghanistan over the last few years, despite the efforts of coali­tion and Afghan forces.
Focus­ing on Amin isn’t fair to the other Afghan jour­nal­ists who toil every day, but what he wants to do next is illus­tra­tive. He wants to come to the U.S. to fin­ish his edu­ca­tion, make films and doc­u­men­taries about Afghanistan and be a life­line for his left-behind col­leagues through the Afghan Acad­emy of Arts and Cin­ema Edu­ca­tion and The Film­mak­ers Union of Afghanistan. Most impor­tant, he wants to return to his native land to make films about the hur­dles to enter­ing the mod­ern world.
Per­haps by help­ing Amin, oth­ers can be helped, too. Any­one wish­ing to help can [email me](mailto:chris@back-to-iraq?subject=Helping Amin) and I’ll for­ward them on to Amin’s friend Bob here in the states.

My lat­est col­umn — hope­fully funny and bit­ing — [is up at Spot-on.com](http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/10/its_giuliani_time.html). Here’s a sam­ple:

Look­ing at the U.S. Pres­i­den­tial con­test from afar, I can only shake my head with dis­be­lief. Sure, all of the can­di­dates, Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans alike, com­pete to see who can be a bet­ter bootlicker to Israel, but only one makes Israel and its defense — as well as the Global War on what­ever — the cen­ter­piece of his cam­paign. And only this one is truly, pro­foundly dan­ger­ous.
Rudy Giuliani’s bel­li­cos­ity and [Big Man style of governance](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPzgAoZYr3E) is a threat to domes­tic pol­i­tics, yes. For those of us over­seas who have cov­ered our eyes at the cas­cades of screw-ups that has been the Bush pres­i­dency, there is only one fright­en­ing thought. If Giu­liani wins the nom­i­na­tion and the Oval Office, we ain’t seen noth­ing yet. Because his for­eign pol­icy can be summed up in six words: “Ver­ily, I will kick Mus­lim ass.”

It was a fun col­umn to write.
In blog news, I *still* don’t have com­ments work­ing thanks to a lack of time to dig into the code. Sorry about that. I will get it fixed at some point.