On the top floor of a towering apartment block in Cairo, half a dozen Syrian activists are hunched over their laptops. Each man organized demonstrations in his home town before escaping the Assad regime's intelligence agents in the last few months. Now, armed with a list of trusted contacts that stretches across the borders from southwest Syria to Lebanon and Jordan, they have become a key link in the supply chain of an opposition movement that is struggling to outmaneuver a brutal crackdown. Donations collected from Syrians and well-wishers in Cairo are used to purchase cell phones, satellite communications equipment, medicine, and money, which is smuggled to friends and family members on the inside. In turn, protesters send out video evidence of attacks, which the men in Cairo catalogue, upload to YouTube, and forward to media outlets.

The men work with close contacts in their own villages and neighborhoods, independently of organizing committees or opposition bodies. Abdel Youssef fled from Ad Dumayr, a city northeast of Damascus. Syrian authorities went door to door there searching for military defectors on Wednesday night and he spent the day following their movements through eyewitness accounts. As he tells the story of how he fled, a Skype window flashes up on his screen. A woman he knows tells him that security forces attempting to arrest a man have captured his daughter instead. "Now I'm looking out the window," the message reads. "She is being beaten up by the security forces because she is saying ‘Allahu Akhbar'." Abdel Youssef passes on information like this to a contact in the Free Syrian Army, who he says use this information to block roads and set up ambushes in an attempt to protect demonstrations.

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The United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) delivered its long-anticipated indictment to Lebanese prosecutor Said Mirza yesterday, reportedly naming members of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. By accusing Hezbollah of murdering a prominent Sunni leader, the sealed indictment and accompanying arrest warrants could spark renewed sectarian unrest during a time of broader regional instability. Lebanese authorities have 30 days to execute the arrest warrants, while Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has previously warned that his organization would "cut the hands" of anyone who tries to detain a Hezbollah member. Nasrallah will deliver a speech tomorrow evening, surely slamming the indictments. New indictments naming Syrian elements may also be issued in the coming weeks, adding to the tension.

Taken together, these developments present Prime Minister Najib Miqati and his new government with their most significant challenge yet, potentially putting Lebanon on a collision course with the international community, in addition to the threat of domestic violence. Developments related to the tribunal have toppled previous cabinets, most recently in January when the government collapsed following the withdrawal of Hezbollah and its allies from the cabinet. Yet, some mitigating factors may blunt the indictment's impact, resulting in something more than a non-event, but less than the cataclysm long-expected to accompany the indictment's release. 

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Historical dates often emerge by sheer coincidence. In 2009, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad formulated an operational goal for his tenure: by 2011 he wanted to build institutions that would justify the proclamation of a Palestinian state. This would not just have symbolic value, as PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat's statement in 1988, but would carry practical implications. Fayyad's efforts have commanded international admiration. The West Bank is indeed run in a way that meets many criteria for successful statehood. As opposed to the past, funds are used responsibly and accounting standards are transparent. The security forces -- originally trained by U.S. Lieutenant General Keith Dayton -- are remarkably effective. Both the Palestinian population and the Israel Defense Forces rely on them more than ever. Hence, September 2011 began to crystallize as a realistic date for the founding of a Palestinian state.

Fayyad's 2011 deadline for the declaration of Palestinian statehood had acquired enormous importance, even though Fayyad never connected it to the bid for U.N. recognition. It has provided Palestinians with a political horizon and a strong motivation to try the route of peaceful resistance and reliance on the international community's support for the new state. The idea of turning to the U.N. for recognition of Palestine seems not to have been a long-term strategy; it emerged as an option faute de mieux, in the absence of negotiations, and without reasonable hope that Netanyahu has the will or the mandate for a meaningful Israeli compromise.

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The popular uprisings in Syria represent the most serious challenge to Hezbollah since the 2006 war with Israel. A regime change in Syria would threaten a major arms supply route to Hezbollah; deny the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas axis its Arab linchpin; weaken Hezbollah's deterrence capacities vis-à-vis Israel; and deny the Hezbollah leaders and their families a safe haven when they feel threatened by Israel, as was the case in 2006. This poses a unique challenge to Hezbollah, which had comfortably sided with the revolts in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain. When Hezbollah's Iranian mentor Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour was dismissed from his official post last April because of his sympathies with the Iranian opposition, Hezbollah was silent despite a heated debate inside the party ranks. The uprisings in Syria pose a challenge similar to the one they faced with the 2009 repression of the Green Movement in Iran. 

How does Hezbollah really view the prospect of regime change in Damascus? In a recent round of interviews I conducted with Hezbollah officials in Beirut, all those I spoke to agreed that a regime change in Syria would not occur easily or peacefully.  So far, Hezbollah officials believe that Bashar al Assad will survive. They believe that unlike Hosni Mubarak or Zein Ben Ali, Assad still enjoys a wide base of support especially in major cities like Damascus and Aleppo. As a senior Hezbollah official pointed out, "Alawites and Christians will not abandon Bashar." The Assad regime and its wide base of support, they said, will fight back. Should Bashar al Assad fail to rein in the protests quickly, they fear a protracted civil war that would engulf Syria, spill over into Lebanon, especially in the north, and destabilize other countries in the region, including Turkey.  Above all, even more than the loss of military and financial supply lines, these Hezbollah leaders fear a mortal blow to the "Resistance Axis" which has been central to their place in the Middle East.

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On Jan. 16, Amb. Robert Ford stepped off a plane in Damascus -- and right into a diplomatic crisis in Lebanon. The news that Hezbollah and its allies, which are supported by Syria and Iran, have secured the votes to elect a friendly Lebanese prime minister will no doubt be on the top of Ford's agenda as Washington struggles to rein in Hezbollah's growing influence.

Ford's arrival marks the first time a U.S. ambassador has set foot in Syria since Washington withdrew its last envoy in February 2005 following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Relations between the two countries, while never friendly, have been dismal ever since.

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While a far more riveting drama has been playing out on the streets of Tunis over the past few days, Beirut has been buffeted by a whirlwind of events as well. The prosecutor for the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) delivered long-anticipated indictments to the pre-trial judge today dealing another glancing blow to Lebanon's stability on the heels of last week's government collapse. The indictments follow Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's Sunday evening speech where he laid the battle lines for the coming weeks, rejecting the re-nomination of Saad Hariri as Prime Minister, vowing to defend the Shiite movement against the indictments, and calling for a "Lebanese solution" to the crisis, devoid of international interference.

Adding to the frenzy, the Lebanese TV station Al-Jadid broadcast an audiotape of a 2005 meeting in which Saad Hariri, a UN investigator, and a Lebanese security official met with one of the so-called "false witnesses" in the UN investigation. While by no means a "smoking gun" proving that the UN investigation and subsequent tribunal have been manipulated, the taped discussion will cast further doubt on the tribunal's credibility at a key turning point in the UN process.

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When Saad Hariri entered the Oval Office to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday, he did so as the prime minister of Lebanon. Twenty minutes later, he was merely the head of a caretaker government forced to rush back to Beirut (with brief stops in Paris and Ankara) to attend to the umpteenth crisis in a country fraught with political and sectarian divisions.

In a symbolically well-timed smack, 11 Hezbollah opposition and allied ministers resigned from the national-unity government after a rocky 14 months. Lebanese President Michel Sleiman will hold consultations on Monday to name a new PM and form a new government. This may take time (Lebanese have taken umbrage of the fact that Iraqis beat their record at forming its government), and not a few Lebanese have already quipped that even a caretaker government would do a better job than the paralyzed and dysfunctional cabinet that just passed away. Some people will be tempted to dismiss this crisis as yet another time-consuming, nerve-wrecking Lebanese drama, but the succession of shock waves is bringing home the point that the two sides are now locked in a fight for their very existence.

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As Lebanon braces for a U.N. tribunal to announce indictments in the 2005 assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, one key suspect is beyond the scope of any court of law.

Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah's chief of operations until his own assassination in Damascus in 2008, likely played a role in the massive car bombing that claimed the lives of the former Lebanese prime minister and 22 others in Beirut. Experts on Lebanon and Hezbollah say it is difficult to envision a crime of such scale and consequence without Mughniyeh's involvement.

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On Wednesday, two male STL investigators -- an Australian and a Frenchman -- visited the office of gynecologist Iman Sharara in Southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, after making an appointment with the purpose of examining the records of at least 14 people who had visited her clinic since 2003. The investigators, accompanied by a female translator, were subsequently mobbed by 150 women who surrounded them, violently attacked them, and snatched a briefcase that one of them was carrying which contained a laptop and official STL documents.

The Western media have largely not picked up on the latest episode in Hezbollah's campaign against the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, driven by the Tribunal's rumored potential indictments of Hezbollah members. But the episode marks the introduction of a new, "bottom-up" variable in Hezbollah's political strategy that is aimed at discrediting the STL and those who cooperate with its investigations. This variable has been used to escalate the campaign with potentially serious consequences for the Lebanese government's relationship with Hezbollah.

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In the year since the [2006 Israel-Hezbollah] war, the Mahdi Scouts had nearly doubled its national enrollment to 60,000. They had run out of capacity to admit more, [the chief of Hezbollah's scouts] Bilal Naim said, but they were expanding as fast as they could. Hezbollah policed its community tightly, but not without concern for its mental well-being. Constant warfare (or mobilization for such) took its toll, especially on children and on the families of martyrs.

One goal of the scouts was to comfort the afflicted. The scouts tried to maintain a state of normalcy -- at least as Hezbollah defined it -- for its most vulnerable members. If left to their own devices, Bilal Naim said, the children of martyrs would isolate themselves and develop emotional problems. "We try to raise the children in the community and find new husbands for the widows," he said. "Otherwise the children become complicated, and develop unhealthy behaviors like aggression."

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Beirut has witnessed a distinct spike in tensions in recent days as elements across Lebanon's diverse political spectrum brace for impending indictments to be issued by the U.N. Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL). Speculation has been rife that the indictments will name several members of the Lebanese Shiite militant organization Hezbollah. This outcome could in turn trigger a collapse of the fragile consensus government, or worse, sectarian violence in Beirut and beyond. Indeed, many observers compare the tense atmosphere in Beirut today to the period preceding Lebanon's last bout with significant sectarian strife in May 2008 when scores were killed and wounded over several days of fighting.

Jamil al-Sayyed's announcement of 33 arrest warrants against prominent Lebanese and international officials is the latest escalation in the ongoing crisis. Those named in the warrants stand accused of providing "false testimony" to the U.N. investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. While Syria hasn't officially admitted a role in the arrests, this move is likely Damascus' latest attempt to cast doubt on the STL and aims to pressure the Lebanese government, particularly Prime Minister Saad Hariri, to disavow the U.N. court.

The tribunal crisis encompasses far more than what the legal jargon of indictments and false testimony might suggest. Explicitly or implicitly, it embodies all the complex challenges that confront Lebanon: Sunni-Shiite sectarian tensions, Hezbollah's weapons, confessional power-sharing, the influence of regional players particularly Syria (recall that suspicions initially centered on the Assad regime -- some of whose members were specifically mentioned and then redacted in the first U.N. investigation report), and broader proxy battles between the West and the Hezbollah/Syria/Iran alliance.

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Four years after a flurry of predictions about the "Lebanonization" of Iraq, they may be coming true. "Lebanonization" was a derogatory term, a hint at imminent civil war, political deadlock, Iran's hand in local militias and on many domestic levers. The columns and commentary on Iraq's "Lebanonization" issued a collective "uh oh," warning the state would fall apart like Lebanon did from 1975-1991.

What moved the term through officialdom was a perception that Iran and Syria were playing Iraq the way they played Lebanon in 1980s: perpetuating a status quo of chaos, then profiting from the melee. The Sadrists were like Hezbollah-in-waiting, tied to Tehran and using force to stymie Iraq's government, if they couldn't control it outright.

"What prompted me to use the term was the external dynamic … and it has still has some validity," said Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who has served as the top U.S. diplomat in both Iraq and Lebanon. He concedes that at present, in Iraq as in Lebanon, Iran has a virtual veto - influence enough to block any major decision that crosses its interests.

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The view from the US embassy in Beirut overlooking the Mediterranean and Sanin Mountains will probably be the only tranquil picture that Washington's new Ambassador Maura Connelly will encounter as she readies for her new mission.

The latest border clash between the Lebanese army and the IDF, and the leaks of a possible involvement by Hezbollah in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, are driving tensions high in the country. As such, the current situation begs a vigorous US diplomatic push on several fronts in order to avert further escalation and a possibility of war that might spill beyond Lebanon's borders.

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With the announcement from Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah this week that Hizbullah members may be indicted for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Raifk Hariri, one thing is now (publicly) clear, no matter what one may think about the integrity of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL): the militant Shiite party is both angry and concerned. Of course, this isn't a wholly new development: the party has apparently been preparing for just such an eventuality at least since the summer of 2006 when the first media reports began circulating in this regard (interestingly, in Hizbullah's analysis, these reports came just after Israel found itself unable to smash its bitter enemy in open battle during the July War).

At that time, and over the intervening years, the party was genuinely fearful that an STL indictment against it -- for the murder of the leading Sunni in the country -- might be added to an already formidable, though not insurmountable, "Cedar Revolution" cocktail of threats and weaknesses pressed by its many domestic, regional and international opponents. Indeed, more than the danger of another Israeli assault, it can be said that Hizbullah felt existentially threatened at the time by the prospect of an open civil war, aided and abetted by outside powers and fought along sectarian lines (mainly Sunni-Druze vs. Shiite). Hizbullah had learned, and painfully so, that its ultimate fight against Israel could not be properly conducted in times of internal bloodshed -- such as during the Amal-Hizbullah engagements of the late 1980s -- and that an STL indictment during a period of already high sectarian tension could tip the balance.

Now, however, the party has reached a fundamentally different -- and more secure -- position of political, diplomatic and military power, not to mention ideological coherence. Which is precisely why one should not over-emphasize Hizbullah's concern vis-à-vis the STL's current (purported) track -- unless you are a partisan and/or polemicist and have a stake in shaping the course of the fight.

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