BEIRUT: The killing of a top army officer in Lebanon draws the military into the political crisis gripping the country and is a clear message to the chief of the armed forces who was tipped to become president, analysts said on Thursday.
“The killing of Francois El-Hajj has turned the army into a political side... and is a huge blow to the military,” Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a visiting scholar with the Carnegie Middle East Centre, said.
“His killing caps a political and security escalation in the country... which was turning the army into a political side, into a partisan body against its will,” she added.
Hajj and his bodyguard were killed by a car bomb on Wednesday, and analysts believe he was targeted because he was tipped to replace army chief General Michel Sleiman, the leading candidate for the presidency.
Lebanon has been without a head of state since Nov 23 when incumbent Emile Lahoud stepped down at the end of his term, with rival political parties unable to agree on a successor.
Sleiman earlier this month emerged as a frontrunner to fill the vacancy for head of state but the ruling Western-backed majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition remain at odds on the make-up of the future cabinet and on how to amend the constitution to allow for his election.
Analysts said targeting the military was a dangerous and unprecedented twist to the country’s long-running political crisis, the worst since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
It also marks the first time that a figure who was not overtly anti-Syrian has fallen victim to the string of assassinations that have shaken Lebanon in the last three years. All of the previous victims were anti-Syrian political figures and journalists.“Those behind Hajj’s murder are telling the Lebanese: ‘you are vulnerable and the institution you relied on is not even capable of protecting itself’,” said Ziad Baroud, a constitutional expert and political analyst.
“It’s a psychological message that no target is off-limits.
“All of Lebanon’s institutions had been paralysed and the army was the only remaining solid institution,” he added.
The leading An-Nahar daily said the latest car bombing was intended “to terrorise the army and the consensus candidate,” referring to Sleiman.
“Hajj assassination: the bloody road to Baabda,” said the headline in the opposition daily Al-Akhbar, referring to the suburb where the presidential palace is located and where the general was killed on his way to work.
The independent dayly Al-Anwar said that for the first time the army had become the target of an assassination “to make it understand that it was now embroiled in the country’s political conflict.”
“The other message was directed at the army chief to tell him to stop thinking of the presidency,” the paper added.
Before Hajj was killed the army had remained on the sidelines of the crisis between the rival political parties and was seen as the only solid and unifying institution in the country.
Saad-Ghorayeb said the general’s killing undermines the army’s role and will serve only to further escalate the political crisis and the standoff over the presidency.
“Things are going to get worse before they get better,” she said. “Now the army has to watch its own back, undermining that role which it has played so well since 2005.”—AFP
