Does the assassination of Lukman Slim serve to fuel the dynamic of solutions or to curb them? (Antoine Asmar)

Lukman Slim was brought down at an ambiguous time and place, just like the ambiguity to add up to the gloom endured by the Lebanese, in a period of political and security void, in a geography of influence overflowing with significance amidst the demographic of the location of the assassination.

 

The man was killed during a stage of local void and regional transition, in which ambiguity, tampering and misfortune abound, fueled with the abundance of the  secret intelligence agencies activities.

 

1- On the six-month commemoration of the port of Beirut explosion, the disaster that upended the priorities and triggered an unprecedented international dynamic, led by France, which wants to find a Lebanese momentum, that will lead to two outcomes :

 

a) Interim form, based on a government with a mission that launches the dynamism of economic and financial reform, and is considered as a milestone for the future of Lebanon.

 

b) Constitutive , supported by the president and by the initiation of a national dialogue under international auspices that leads to a review of the entire system, in search of a new social contract that establishes an innovative formula that manages the Lebanese difference and avoids the country falling into the prohibition of ragging wars every two or three decades. This situation is repeated every time due to the failure of the basis of the founding and charter that was first set in 1920, regenerared in 1943 and amended in the Taef agreement of 1990.

 

2- Few days after French President Emmanuel Macron announced that "the Lebanese system is in trouble because of the alliance between corruption and intimidation." As if someone wanted to invest in the blood of Lukman Slim to associate Macron's words with action, then the new intimidation would be a platform to launch a big disastrous momentum that paves the way for in depth solutions.

 

3- On the eve of the launch of the updated French initiative, while Paris is preparing to receive the Lebanese officials in order to exert them to commit to the forensic audit of the accounts of the Banque du Liban. It is the cornerstone of the initiative, and that some officials are striving to evade, to avoid being caught for the crimes they committed against the Lebanese and their wealth.

 

4- In coincidence with the planned and expected shuffling of the cards in the region, starting with the Iranian nuclear issue, and not ending with Washington's desire to stop the war in Yemen, which is the anticipated task of the American Diplomat Timothy Lenderking, who is to be appointed by President Joseph Biden as a special presidential envoy.

 

5-  In intersection with many discussions about a transitional stage in which regional and international intelligence agencies with multiple heads and goals will tamper with, and will choose  Lebanon, among other arenas, to achieve breakthroughs that keep pace with the following solutions. And the exploitation of shadow devices in such transitional circumstances has become a familiar intelligence tradition.

 

6-  At the threshold of the formation of an American-French bilateral axis, whereby Paris would be granted freedom of movement in Lebanon to create a way out of the escalating crisis. It is an axis similar to that formed in June 2004 on the sidelines of the Normandy summit between Presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac, which concluded at the time to give the power to Paris to end the Syrian tutelage over Lebanon, and consequently the dissolution of the International-Arab tutelle that was granted to Damascus in 1990 as a prize for its symbolic participation in the Liberation war of Kuwait and grantung the coalition led by America and progressive Arab coverage. This famous summit had launched an international political dynamic in Lebanon, which began with the acknowledgment of the Resolution 1559, and went beyond the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which led to the retreat of the Syrian army from Lebanon and that led to the vertical political division that continues to strive until our actual day's.

 

The assassination of Lukman Slim coincided with all these disasters, stages, and intersections, without necessarily being directly linked to them. But coincidence does not obscure the suspicions that followed the crime over to whom it benefitted,  the ready to use political accusation of "Hezbollah" who surely had an ambiguous relationship with the late who claimed to stage a rivalry to the hegemony of Hezb Allah within the shiah community.

 

Finally, does his assassination serve to fuel the dynamic of solutions  or to curb them?