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US, France, Germany, UK Urge De-Escalation along Lebanon’s Southern Border

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) meets with the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Beirut on October 20, 2023. (AFP)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) meets with the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Beirut on October 20, 2023. (AFP)
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US, France, Germany, UK Urge De-Escalation along Lebanon’s Southern Border

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) meets with the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Beirut on October 20, 2023. (AFP)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) meets with the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Beirut on October 20, 2023. (AFP)

Contacts have intensified between Lebanon and international powers to de-escalate the tensions along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held telephone talks with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati to discuss the situation in Lebanon and the region, the PM’s office said on Friday.

Earlier on Friday, Mikati had received German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Beirut.

The FM underlined the need to “avoid any miscalculations and keep Lebanon away from the conflict” in Gaza as much as possible.

For his part, Mikati said: “We are exerting all our efforts to restore calm in the South.”

He called for pressure to be applied on Israel to “stop its aggression against Lebanon and reach a ceasefire in Gaza.”

Baerbock met her Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib. They agreed that the two-state solution would pave the way to tackling the root causes of the conflict in Gaza.

“We are banking on Germany’s influence in Europe and the world and its experience in suffering the calamities of war to reach an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and allow humanitarian aid to be delivered” to the enclave, Bou Habib added.

He also warned that the dangerous consequences of the conflict will not only impact the Middle East, but Europe in specific and the entire world.

The minister made the same warning before several ambassadors to Lebanon, including the envoys of Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Canada.

He urged their countries to intervene to pressure Israel to stop its escalation, while warning of the rising hate speech and incitement to violence that would spread to the West.

Meanwhile, caretaker Defense Minister Maurice Sleep received a telephone call from his French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu for talks on the developments in southern Lebanon and Gaza.

Lecornu stressed that France was carrying out contacts with the international community to discuss the developments in Gaza.

He stressed “the need for Lebanon to steer clear of the repercussions of the situation in the Palestinian territories.”

Lebanon is a priority for France, he declared.

He also highlighted the role of the United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL) in the south and the need to avoid escalation along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

For his part, Sleem pointed to the “ongoing Israeli violations against civilians and civilian, health and religious infrastructure in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”

He said close coordination was ongoing between the Lebanese army and UNIFIL.

The situation in the South was discussed between Army Commander Joseph Aoun and a US Congressional delegation. They tackled the overall situation in Lebanon and its military and the challenges it is facing.

Aoun also held talks with Air Marshal Sampson, UK Defense Senior Advisor to the Middle East and North Africa, who was in Lebanon for a two-day visit.

Sampson underscored the UK’s stance that Lebanon must not be dragged into a regional conflict.

He stressed that the Lebanese army was leading efforts to protect Lebanon’s security and stability, and this is a priority for the UK.

He also met with Mikati during his visit and contacted UNIFIL commander Aroldo Lazaro, expressing the UK’s support to the peacekeeping force and its significant role in preserving calm and stability.

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Arab World

At Syria Cemetery, People Search for Missing Loved Ones

File photo: People searching for bodies in a trench believed to be a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus in December (AFP)
File photo: People searching for bodies in a trench believed to be a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus in December (AFP)
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At Syria Cemetery, People Search for Missing Loved Ones

File photo: People searching for bodies in a trench believed to be a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus in December (AFP)
File photo: People searching for bodies in a trench believed to be a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus in December (AFP)

Weeping, Fairuz Shalish grasps the red earth at an unmarked grave in Syria that she believes may hold her son, one of tens of thousands of people who vanished under ousted president Bashar al-Assad.

Thousands poured out of the country's web of prisons in the final days of Assad's rule and after the opposition factions toppled him on December 8.

But as the weeks go by, many families are still desperately searching for news of relatives who were detained or went missing during years of his iron-fisted rule.

Shalish, 59, has not seen her 27-year-old son Mohammed since military security personnel stormed their home near Homs around dawn in early November, just weeks before Assad's ouster.

"I was screaming," she said at the Tal al-Naser cemetery near Homs.

"They shot him in the leg, he fell on the ground and two of them came and opened fire" repeatedly before taking him away, she said, a foul smell lingering in the crisp winter air.

"He has four young children... he has a son who is two," she told AFP.

"I tell him that (his father) will be back tomorrow."

The fate of detainees and others who went missing remains one of the most harrowing legacies of Syria's conflict, which started in 2011 when Assad's forces brutally repressed anti-government protests.

Arbitrary arrests, violence and torture were all part of a paranoid state killing machine that crushed any hint of dissent.

"There were people who accused (Mohammed) of being in contact with revolutionaries in the north," Shalish said.

Her other son, detained at the same time, was later released, but she was told unofficially that Mohammed had died, without receiving any formal notification.

'Need to be certain'

At the sprawling cemetery, pieces of construction blocks serve as makeshift headstones in the dirt where Shalish sits.

At an earlier visit, she learnt that an individual buried there had the same date of death as her son.

But she has been unable to obtain authorization to exhume the body, which was identified only by a code.

"If I have to go to the end of the Earth, I will go. I need to see if it's my son or not," she said.

"I need to be certain, so my heart can be at rest."

Adnan Deeb, known as Abu Sham, who is in charge of burials at the Tal al-Naser cemetery, sorts through ledgers containing the names of people who are interred there, leafing through worn, handwritten pages of records, organized by date.

He said that after the uprising started, authorities began bringing bodies from the military hospital to be buried at the cemetery.

"Some had codes, while others were identified by name," said the towering man in a long black robe, his head wrapped in a traditional keffiyeh.

"Sometimes we'd get 10, sometimes five... They'd bring them in ambulances or in pick-ups or military vehicles," he said, adding that some bore signs of torture.

"It was an atrocious sight. Atrocious. But we had no choice but to do our job," he added.

Still looking

Deeb estimated several thousand former detainees could be buried at the cemetery.

He expressed hope that the military hospital's computer systems would eventually reveal the names of the bodies identified only by codes.

People need to "know where their children are buried", Deeb said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has said determining the fate of the missing will be a massive task likely to take years.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, has said more than 100,000 people have died in detention from torture or dire health conditions across Syria since 2011.

Rafic al-Mohbani, 46, from Homs, has been searching for answers for more than a decade.

His eyes flash with rage as he recounts how his brother Raef and brother-in-law Hassan Hammadi disappeared on their way home from work in June 2013.

"They told us they were at the military security branch in Homs. We went and asked, and they said they transferred them to Damascus. After that, we don't know what happened," he said.

"We paid several sums of money to several people" secretly, he said.

"We got a lawyer, and still couldn't find out anything."

After prisoners began streaming out of Assad's jails last month, "we posted the photos again, we've been looking at cemeteries and hospitals", Mohbani said.

He also visited Tal al-Naser cemetery, with no success.

But the gaunt man, who works as a mechanic, said he still had hope of learning the two men's fate.

"God willing, justice will prevail for us and everyone in Syria."