
By Kit Klarenberg – Aug 20, 2021
Leaks show UK Foreign Office directed influence operations targeting Lebanese youth and civil society to shape the direction of mass protests in service of British interests.
Editorâs note:Â The leaked British Foreign Office documents described in this investigation first surfaced in December 2020 and were covered in local Arabic-language media, but largely ignored by their English-language peers. As Lebanonâs economic and political condition worsens, with Western states taking the lead in exacerbating the crisis, The Cradle has decided to revive these leaks to shine a light on how the British government uses stealth and manipulation to sway Lebanonâs political outcomes.
On 15 July, Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri resigned for the second time, having failed to form a government after nine months of unsuccessful negotiations. It was just the latest cataclysmic chapter in the political turmoil that has gripped Lebanon for years.
Hariri first resigned in October 2019 after large-scale, incendiary protests engulfed Beirut, saying he wished to create a âpositive shockâ to the system. But the streets of Lebanon continue to ebb and flow with protestors, motivated by grievances over waste management, corruption, unemployment, falling living standards, rising inflation and a myriad other failings of the government.
While few would argue their collective complaints are without merit, there are unambiguous indications this tumult was covertly fomented by hostile foreign powers, including the United Kingdom, in service of regime change.
Contentious politics
Leaked Foreign Office files in December 2020 reveal that seven months before the protests erupted, the UK commissioned a Target Audience Analysis in Lebanon, which sought to pinpoint a segment of the population that could effectively be mobilized to âaffect positive social change,â and provide methods of reducing tensions between sectarian communities to unify them in opposition to the countryâs ruling elite.
The Target Audience Analysis was delivered by ARK, a shadowy consultancy founded by probable MI6 operative Alistair Harris, which has managed “destabilizing psyops” (psychological operations) on behalf of both the US and UK governments the world over. It identified a potentially ideal target audience, amounting to 12% of the Lebanese population, whose disavowed violence did not reject âother forms of contentious politics,â and could be âinfluencedâ to engage in âbehaviors leading to positive social change,â such as protests and civil society initiatives.
In order to stir this audience to action, and develop it to âinclude a larger fraction of the public,â ARK proposed a clandestine, multi-channel assault on public perceptions by way of a wide-ranging strategic communications campaign. A Whitehall tender document for the project shows it cost ÂŁ2,100,000, and ran from April 2019 to March 2021.
ARKâs submissions to the Foreign Office make it clear that it has been running manipulative âprogrammingâ in Lebanon since 2010. Cited examples include a British Embassy in Beirut-funded multimedia electoral communications campaign in 2017/18âdubbed Get Out The Voteââto motivate first-time voters to engage with the democratic process.â
Working with four local partner organizations, the company created and disseminated âcompellingâ content via social media, local broadcast channels, print media, and billboards around the country. The activities of its successor the following year, dubbed Take Action, including mock elections in universities, flash mobs, and rock concerts, were said to have been âcovered by local journalists and influencersâ and âregularly trended on social mediaâ as a result.
In subsequent public surveys, ARK bragged that Take Action billboards were the second most-recognized among respondents, âsignificantly ahead of political entities and beer company advertising,â with 30 percent of first-time voters having engaged with the campaign in some way or other.
The companyâs activities in Lebanon are so extensive that it has a dedicated production hub in the country, supported by another in London, producing output for websites, TV, and a 30-strong constellation of âtargetedâ social media assets in West Asia, publishing original content five times per day on average, with just one reaching 45 percent of Lebanonâs population.
Particular attention was drawn to Facebook page Ana Hon (âI am hereâ in Arabic), which was secretly created by the company under the auspices of a youth empowerment project funded by the Canadian government to build âthe communications and mobilization capacities of young peopleâ in Tripoli, Sidon, and Central Bekaa, and âidentify and promote positive stories from their communities and peer group.â
Locals were trained on video production to âdevelop compelling social media coverage of these activities,â and shared in order to encourage other young Lebanese to âparticipate in or replicateâ similar pursuits. The endeavour bore significant fruit. By September 2018, Ana Honâs reach stood at a staggering 16.3 million people and one million views per month, including an estimated 37% of Tripoliâs population, with three-quarters of page followers aged 18â35.
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Recruiting âAgents of Changeâ
Expanding Ana Honâs reach was central to ARKâs strategic communications plan. Regional hubs were to be established in Beirut and other locales, publishing stories on initiatives that provided âreplicable examples of pro-social behavior,â and the primary page serving as an aggregator. This âhyper-localâ approach would ensure delivery of messaging to a wide variety of audiences, ensuring citizens of all ages, religions, and classes could be propagandized and arrayed against the rulers of Lebanon.
This was to be achieved by recruiting and training a legion of new Ana Hon reportersâat least 50% of whom would be women, âas they are more likely to be able to conduct effective outreach to female audiencesââon top of the platformâs existing 24 staffers. Offline events were to âreinforce messaging and support sustainable behavioural changeâ [emphasis added].
ARK also sought to create a ânetwork of social stability championsâ comprising âestablished local media actors and influencersâ who âshare the UKâs objectives,â provide them with âtailored trainingâ in production and messaging, while ârecruiting agents of changeââlocal governance actors and NGOs. In tandem, the companyâs cut-outs would engage in cooperative endeavors, for broadcast via Ana Hon, and promotion in the national media, to âmaximise their impactâ and boost their âname recognition and credibility.â
A file related to risk management indicates ARK was well aware of the dangers inherent in its cloak-and-dagger activities, with the firm noting that Hezbollah supporters had responded to Whitehallâs March 2019 designation of the movementâs political wing as a terrorist group by âthreatening attacksâ on UK government âinterestsâ and âaffiliated groupsâ in Lebanon.
Still, the company assured the Foreign Office it would be able to forewarn the department of any resultant âdirect threatsâ to the project as it âregularlyâ monitored Hezbollah-affiliated social media channels, including private WhatsApp messenger groups, for potential hazards, and would furthermore âadapt programming,â if and when necessary to mitigate. The question of how ARK gained illicit access to those groups is an open one.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the firm reinforced the fact that its local partnersâmedia outlets, âgovernance actors,â and NGOsâwould be the public fronts of the initiative, in essence, buffers ensuring the UKâs role was obscured from view.
âContent will not be directly attributed to the UK [and] this project will be designed and presented [emphasis added] as a social cohesion project, providing a strong defence against any attacks on the UK,â ARK pledged. âPartners will be selected for sharing project objectives [and] based on their credibility as messengers and/or existing, established follower bases inside Lebanon. All content will be hyper-local, referencing local themes, locations and individuals that the target audience understands.â
Countering disaffection
A separate Foreign Office operation in Lebanon reveals the countryâs youth are also âAgents of Changeâ that ARK seeks to embroil in its regime change efforts. Set to run from July 2019 to March 2021 and costing ÂŁ1.2 million, it aimed to stimulate âfresh national thinking and debateâ in young citizens âto challenge restricted political, social, and economic choices,â and in turn compel âgreater communication and engagement with municipal governance and parliamentary structures and processes.â
âYouth engaged in the project should be equipped with the necessary political, civic, and core skills including dialogue, communications, problem solving, and monitoring, to contribute to change,â the tender stated.
Key targets listed in the document included university students, youth groups, social movements, members of parliament, and political parties. Due to its past electioneering drives, ARK was well-placed to access these elements and members thereof.
It boasted in submissions to Whitehall that it enjoyed âstrongâ relationships with, among others, the Lebanese Association for Democratic Electionsâwith which it was âpartnering on [a] US-funded governance accountability projectââthe Professional Centre of Mediation, Louder, youth organizations Beirut24 and Hala Baqa, and âfemale governance actors,â such as Beirut MP Rola Tabish. These associations were said to have been âessentialâ to the Take Action campaign.
Another document mapped out a âtheory of changeâ for the operation, which contended that if ARK successfully fostered a culture of active youth participation in political life that transcended âconfessional lines,â enabling young people to become more involved in decision-making processes and âable to hold political institutions and individuals accountable,â then governance in Lebanon would by definition be âimprovedââpresumably a euphemism for “more pro-Western.”
To achieve this, ARKÂ proposed hosting political participation boot camps across Lebanon, in which attendees engaged in a range of tasks and activities. The company helped them identify âcritical local level issues that should be addressed by governance actorsâ and explore different strategies by which they could be raised and resolved. The company would also convene monthly town hall meetings and other âengagement forumsââsuch as âmunicipal youth committeesââbetween young people, political activists, party leaders, and government officials.
Youth groups would, moreover, be assisted in carrying out surveys of local communities to identify key issues of concern to be raised at the meetings. For the first year of the project, these summits would be facilitated in-house; thereafter, responsibility for organizing them was to be transferred to youth collectives. ARK projected that some of these outfits would be of its own creation. For example, it recommended the creation of a network of young women engaged in politics across Lebanon and connecting them with a mentor in order to form âa national group capable of pushing for greater change.â
Training resources and educational material from the project would be published online, on social media, and in a series of youth-focused websites developed by ARK, along with political interviews, question-and-answer sessions, coverage of bootcamp events, âcalls to action,â and âhumorous messaging campaignsâ developed with local firm 4-Production. Activity on these assets would ramp up ahead of the 2022 elections to boost youth turnout.
ARK selected Beirut, Bekaa, Chouf, and Tripoli as priority regions for intervention, as its Target Audience Analysis indicated young people in these areas were âmost likely to be effectively influenced to engage in political behaviours leading to positive social change,â and the companyâs previous campaigns meant it had a reputation as a âcredible actorâ among local youth groups there.
For instance, during its Take Action campaign in Bekaaâan area of mixed sectarian backgroundsâARK organized a boot camp for 30 students at the Lebanese International University and convened town hall meetings between them and MP Abdul Rahim Murad.
Meanwhile, Chouf was considered an urgency, as increasing youth activism following the 2016 municipal elections ended in âdisappointmentâ two years later, when the opposition list fell short of the threshold for a parliamentary seat. Involvement there was projected to âhelp counter youth disaffection and leverage high electoral participation towards sustained positive engagement.â The details of conspiracies to meddle in foreign elections are rarely spelled out so bluntly.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the need for total secrecy was again paramount, with ARK stressing the project would not be in any way connected to the UK, but instead âpresented to the public [emphasis added] as a Lebanese-led youth political engagement project.â By way of reassurance, it drew attention to previous experience successfully implementing âlow-visibilityâ projects in the country without the UKâs hidden hand being revealed at any stage.
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Unified in outrage
Unluckily for the Foreign Office, the reality of ARKâs machinations in Lebanon was exposed very candidly when these and many other highly incriminating files were leaked on the internet in December 2020. Within 10 days, Alistair Harris had fled the country for London to take up a post within Whitehallâs Civilian Stabilisation Unit.
The extent to which the operations outlined in this article may have influenced anti-government protesters in October 2019 and after is unquantifiable. However, Western media coverage of the unrestâold and newâtakes on a distinctly chilling quality in light of their content. Take, for instance, an Open Democracy article, published weeks after the upheaval began, which documented the frontline role of women in the ârevolution.â
Among other things, it recorded how days earlier, feminist groups had marched to Beirutâs historic Riyad el Solh Square, armed with banners bearing radical slogans relating to gender equality, social justice, and womenâs rights. âIf there were no women, I donât think the revolution would have happened,â one activist quoted in the piece said.
Had any of these collectives, or their members, been tutored in âpushing for greater change,â holding âinstitutions and individuals accountable,â and challenging ârestricted political, social, and economic choicesâ by ARK in some way or other? Did they, wittingly or otherwise, form part of the UKâs covert ânetwork of social stability championsâ in the country?
Similarly, a contemporary Reuters reportâYoung, angry Lebanese ditch their differences to target âunjustâ systemârecords how youths of different sectarian extractions had banded together over the course of the protests, as they were âunifiedâ in their âoutrage,â is eerily resonant. It was surely not for nothing that ARK specifically sought to foster a culture of active youth participation in Lebanon across âconfessional linesâ and specifically ran political training âboot campsâ in the multi-faith region of Bekaa.
Today, Lebanon teeters on the brink of economic implosion, which the World Bank predicts could rank among the worst ever witnessed over the past 150 years. Despite the worsening crisis though, the coast is now again clear for ARK.  In late June, Alistair Harris proudly tweeted a photo of himself assembling personal protective equipment alongside the inhabitants of Beirutâs Shatila refugee camp.
The return of Harris is unsurprising. After all, ARKâs website states the company â[delivers] programming that meets short-term stabilisation objectives⌠[laying] the groundwork for long-term development, growth and stability.â
And so the groundwork for an âimprovedâ Lebanonâas envisioned by a covert psyops enforcerâwas being laid out again. Once that is comprehensively achieved, the closer the country edges to collapse, the more likely a “better” Lebanon would emergeâone that befits the financial, ideological, military, and political interests of Western nations.
Featured image: British government funded psyops organizations are fomenting crisis in Lebanon through an extensive propaganda network. Photo courtesy of The Cradle.
(The Cradle)
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