"Chaos" is Not the Answer

Shortly after arriving home, Sheikh Saleh Aridi, member of the Democratic Party and aide to Talal Urslan, got into his car at 9:30 p.m. last night, and that was the last thing he did. 500 grams of TNT, placed under the driver's seat of the car, exploded killing Aridi and wounding several others.

Given that this assassination has come during a period that has seen the most positive political atmosphere since longer than a lot of us care to remember - a day after President Suleiman announced the beginning of national reconciliation dialogue on the 16th of September, Hariri's peace tour that included a reconciliation agreement in Tripoli with Bekaa as his next stop, Nasrallah's reaching out to Al-Mustaqbal, Jumblatt's reconciliatory rhetoric, and even Geagea's belief that dialogue could lead to coexistence with Hezboallah - it is easy to argue that those behind the attack are targeting national reconciliation and are only interested in maintaining a state of chaos in Lebanon.

Jumblatt accused "those who are hurt by reconciliation" (Al-Mustaqbal). PM Sanioura said the attack was meant "to divide the Lebanese," and Speaker Berri said it is a message "against civil peace in Lebanon" (Naharnet). Urslan also said the perpetrators are those who would benefit from internal civil strife in Lebanon, but he went further and directly named Israel as his prime suspect (As-Safir).

Though I'm glad Lebanese politicians agree (more or less) on something for a change, I myself find it hard to believe that someone who is against civil peace in Lebanon would go and do something like that. If the main goal is simply to divide the society and slow down reconciliation, there are far easier (and I daresay more effective) ways of doing so than a highly-professional and surgically precise assassination of one particular politician. If the goal is to target civil peace, the perpetrators would find it easier commit one or more arbitrary acts of terrorism aimed at groups of people rather than target an individual. I'm not gonna give any ideas, but I think you know what I mean.

I think there's more to this than just "someone spreading chaos." You don't spread chaos with 500g of TNT under the seat of someone's car. The questions we need to ask ourselves are: Who is Saleh Aridi? What has he done in his life? What was he doing when he was killed? Who would want him dead? Maybe if we try to answer these questions instead of yelling out "chaos", we might know where to begin looking for the murderers.

Photo by AFP taken from BBC.