“The secret expenditures” of Lebanon’s intelligence services are an eye opener for the following reasons:

“Secret expenditures” is a code for payoffs to informants or “human assets”.

The expenditures exceeded USD 13 million in 2009 with a surge since 2008 of 100% and 39% for the Internal Security Forces and Military Intelligence respectively.

An assumption of a monthly per capita payment equivalent to the minimum wage (333$ per month) will yield an estimated number of 50,000 informants or twice this number should the payoff be half the minimum wage.

Now, let us for the sake of this exercise, add the number of armed forces estimated to reach 90,000 and then the number of security guards deployed by the security companies in Lebanon which is approximately 8,000 and finally those armed men in various political parties (Hizbollah, Future, LF, SSNP and PSP and others) estimated at a minimum of 20,000. This will bring us to 168,000 armed men and informants without counting the retired armed forces personnel and those who wish to be deployed and are awaiting their turn.

This number represents 76% of all those employed by the public sector and 19% of the manpower in Lebanon’s private sector.

Yes “we” need armed forces; Yes “they” need informants; Yes we are followers of Zua’ama and perhaps “patriotic”. But let us simply ask what kind of a society are we? It seems that since 1943, Lebanon has gone through a metamorphosis to a militarized or militant society or simply a society of squealers and bouncers.

Law Abiding Citizens

It has been propagated that the Lebanese are chaotic by nature and that they break the laws at will. This is propagated by many who wish to duck their responsibilities to enforce the law. The recent introduction of radars to curtail high speed drivers is so far a success. The drivers are abiding by the speed limit and the enforcement so far has been good. The drive from Tripoli to Beirut is a pleasure. The question now is: How long before we discover that the radar is Shia’a, the policeman is Sunni and the road is Maronite?

Jawad Adra