BEIRUT: The Lebanese Army’s decisive and successful military push against gunmen of radical Salafist Sheikh Ahmad Assir in Sidon will eventually have good repercussions on the country’s security and stability, political analysts said Monday. But analysts said the Army’s operation, which led Monday to the capture of Assir’s complex in Abra, east of the southern city of Sidon, needed to be followed up by giving the military a free hand – including a possible declaration of a state of emergency – to impose law and order in a country whose security and stability were increasingly endangered as a result of deep national divisions over the bloody conflict in Syria.

“The Army was ambushed by Ahmad Assir. ... This prompted the Army to fight back and act decisively to uproot this [Assir’s] phenomenon,” Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese Army general, told The Daily Star.

“The Army’s victory will have very good results on the morale and prestige of the military establishment and will boost the people’s confidence in the Army,” said Jaber, director of the Middle East Center for Political Studies and Research, a Beirut-based think tank. [Link]