The Struggle for Lebanon

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　 Lebanon, as has happened several times it its past history, is today wracked by a struggle for its soul. This involves not just Lebanese actors but also draws in regional and international forces, giving this struggle implications for the whole Middle East and even for the global war between the United States and its opponents in the Islamic world.

　 Lebanon has proved so vulnerable and so readily penetrated by outside forces using its territory to play out their rival agendas because of the manner of its formation. It was an artificial state constructed by imperial line-drawing in which the French added to the Mt Lebanon heartland of their Maronite clients, the Sunni plains that had historically belonged to Syria. In this way, the imperial power threw together several sectarian groups that had no particular desire to share the new Lebanese space--and antagonized Syria. In the National Pact of 1943, however, the elites of the Christian and Muslim communities reached a compromise enabling them to live together. It entailed elaborate power sharing which, however, gave the Maronites the dominant position, notably permanent control of the Presidency, which did not change even after they lost their demographic majority. The Pact also involved an agreement that Lebanon’s identity was Arab, (as against the view of some Lebanese nationalists that is was “Phoenician” or a Christian bastion and part of the West), but that its sovereignty would be protected (against Pan-Arab unity projects). This implied Lebanon would stay out of conflicts between the West and the Arab world. Sectarianism was institutionalized with each sect entitled to a share of state jobs, each maintaining its own schools and, in consequence, loyalty to Lebanon remained secondary to sectarian identity. Even the army, which is elsewhere the pillar of the state, cannot be used in Lebanon in major internal conflicts because it is likely to split along sectarian lines if deployed against one particular community.

　Lebanon's stability has periodically been put at risk when the arrangements of the National Pact are violated; or when change in the demographic and socioeconomic weight of the communities becomes incongruent with their political power under the pact; or when external forces, penetrating Lebanon, try to draw it into the Arab or Western camp at the expense of neutrality. Thus, in 1958, the pro-Western policies of Maronite President Chamille Chamoun, at a time when Nasser’s Arab nationalism was mobilizing the Muslim community, sparked the first civil war which brought him down. In 1975, the transposition of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in the form of the armed Palestinian presence in Lebanon which precipitated Israeli attacks on the country, ignited civil war, with the Muslims backing the Palestinian presence and the Maronites opposing it. But the war, as it progressed, had the unexpected effect of mobilizing the previously quiescent Shia community whose growing demographic plurality was now translated into potential political power. Two new movements, first Amal and later Hizbollah, expressed Shia power, while the exit of many Maronites eroded their demographic weight and the Sunnis failed to organize themselves into effective militias.

　The 1989 Taif agreement ended the Civil war and established the “Second Lebanese Republic" under a revised version of the National Pact which continued confessional power sharing. The Arab identity of Lebanon was underlined and there was a redistribution of power away from the Maronite presidency to the cabinet in which the president, Sunni Prime Minister and Shia Speaker of Parliament governed collectively. One flaw in this order was that the largest community, the Shia, still controlled the least powerful office, the Speaker of parliament. But governance was to be by consensus of the leaders of the three communities, all represented by ministers in the cabinet. The negative side of this was that now each of these enjoyed in practice a veto over policy and when they used it to paralyze governance, an arbiter was required to break the stalemate, a role played by Syria. Thus, the three top feuding political leaders, the Maronite president, the Shia speaker of the house, Nabih Berri, and Rafiq al-Hariri, the dominant Sunni leader who usually held the prime minister's office had frequently to travel to Damascus where compromises would be brokered. However, with the exit of Syria from Lebanon, the broker was removed from the system and leaving no practical mechanism for resolving conflicts. With governance by consensus-- in which no community could push its interests too far—-now at risk, each community started searching for ways to protect itself if a power struggle broke out. The post-Taif order would soon start to unravel.       

　What exacerbated the vulnerability of the Lebanese political system was that the role of the “arbiter,” Syria, was deeply controversial. The Maronite, used to thinking of Lebanon as "theirs" had been marginalized under the Taif agreement as only one of several communities; while some decided to participate in the system, and, indeed Maronite but pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud became one of its pillars, others viewed Syria as the main obstacle to their ambitions and some conspired from abroad to involve the US on their side by pushing for the Syrian Accountability and Lebanon Sovereignty Restoration Act which imposed US economic sanctions against Syria until it left Lebanon.

　Although the Syrians had restored stability to Lebanon and sponsored the construction of the Second Lebanese Republic, they, and particularly their pro-consul, general Ghazi Kannan, had made themselves unpopular in Lebanon by their abuse of power and their corrupt accumulation of wealth. This was not, however, entirely a Syria vs. Lebanon cleavage since cross-state alliances linked Lebanese and Syrian interests. In the early 2000s, new Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, was aligned with Lebanese President Lahoud while his mostly Sunni opponents among the Ba'thist old guard, notably General Hikmat Shihabi and Vice President Khaddam, were aligned with Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri and Druze leader Walid Junblatt. As the old guard lost out in Damascus, their Lebanese partners faced marginalization and turned against the Bashar regime. These rival business/patronage networks that generated resources crucial to the power rivalries in Syria and Lebanon alike.

　What precipitated the struggle for power in Lebanon, however, was the active intervention of outside forces in Lebanese affairs which linked Lebanese political cleavages to wider regional and international power struggles. The roots of this go back to the Syrian opposition to the US invasion of Iraq which determined Washington to punish Syria where it appeared most vulnerable, in Lebanon. While the US, under the administration of George Bush Sr, had facilitated the Syrian protectorate over Lebanon as the key to its pacification, now Bush Jr. demonized the Syrian presence as the source of all the country's ills. But the immediate precipitant which unraveled the post–Taif order in Lebanon was French President Jacques Chirac's shift of France's traditional tolerance of Syria's role in Lebanon to opposition to it. Chirac, was aggrieved at Syrian president Bashar as-Asad's unwillngess to open Syria to French influence. At the same time, believing the regional power balance had shifted to the US after the fall of Baghdad, Chirac was keen to heal the rift with the US over France's opposition to the Iraq war. His close Lebanese ally, Rafiq al-Hariri, who had funded his political campaigns, shared his belief that US dominance in the region had made Syria’s role in Lebanon vulnerable.

　This shift in the French position was seen by anti-Syrian forces, led by Maronite figures and the Druze leader,Walid Junblatt, as a signal to heighten their opposition to Syria. The pivotal question was whether, Hariri, the dominant leader of the Sunni community who had worked closely for Syria in the post-Taif order, could be brought to cast his lot with them. Hariri hesitated but appears to have decided against Syria, when Damascus, sensing the gathering of forces against it in Lebanon, sought a change in the Lebanese constitution allowing Hariri’s main rival and Syria’s client, Emile Lahoud, to stand for another term as president. This galvanized the new Franco-American connection to sponsor UN Security Council resolution 1559 of 2004, which called for free presidential elections in Lebanon, withdrawal of foreign troops (Syria) and disarmament of militias (Hizbollah). Syria went ahead and installed Lahoud and refused to withdraw until Israel complied with the similar resolutions which required it to withdraw from Arab territory.

　On 14 February 2005, Hariri was assassinated, an act immediately blamed on Syria. If Syria was responsible, it was, nevertheless, the loser and the beneficiaries were the Americans and Syria's Lebanese opponents. Inside Lebanon, the balance of power was shifted against Syria as the moderately pro-Syrian Sunni community turned vehemently anti-Syrian under the leadership of Hariri's son, Saad, and joined with traditionally anti-Syrian Maronite politicians, thus breaking Muslim solidarity and bringing the Maronites out of their previous relative marginalization. Parallel to this Washington and Paris were able to mobilize international opinion and get another UN resolution against Syria by blaming it for the assassination. Facing a threat of severe sanctions if Syria did not withdraw from Lebanon, President Bashar al-Asad withdrew Syrian forces; henceforth Syrian influence in Lebanon would have to be more covert and dependent of its allies, above all hizbollah, but also parliament speaker Nabih Berri, head of the moderate Shia Amal movement, President Lahoud, and some historically Damascus-friendly Maronite politicians. Lebanon was not only polarized between pro and anti-Syrian forces but it had lost its balancer/arbiter.

　 Temporarily, however, the two sides decided to compromise and in the parliamentary elections of March 14, 2005 held after Syrian withdrawal, hizbollah even struck electoral alliances with some of the anti-Syrian politicians. The anti-Syrian coalition of Maronites, pro-Hariri Sunnis and the Junblatt-led Druze acquired a majority in these elections and formed a government headed by Prime Minister Fuad Sinora in which, however, hizbollah ministers were represented. This implied a compromise in which the anti-Syrian majority would refrain from moves to disarm hizbollah or against Syria while hizbollah would not mobilize against the government and de-stabilize the new post-Syrian order. However, emboldened by US encouragement, the anti-Syrian, so-called “March 14 forces” demanded the resignation of President Lahoud and the disarmament of hizbollah. Moreover, breaking with the tradition of governance by consensus of the  triumvirate of Sunni prime minister, Shia speaker of parliament and Christian President, they attempted to use their parliamentary and cabinet majority to unilaterally make policy. Thus, the speaker and president were brought into opposition to the prime minister and the parliamentary majority on the issue of Syria and the role of its allies in Lebanon. As such, renewed conflict over the distribution of power among offices and sects in the Lebanese system interlocked with regional and international power struggles.[1]

　Meanwhile, external forces ratchet up the tension that would destroy any remnant of governance by consensus in Lebanon. The US and France, led the establishment of an international investigation of the Hariri murder which seemed to target personalities close to power in Syria and raised the specter of severe sanctions if the murder could be pinned on Syria. While the March 14 forces backed this, Hizbollah resolutely rejected such Western-sponsored interference in Lebanon's affairs.            

　At the same time, the conflict over Lebanon coincided with a wider regional struggle. The growing confrontation between the US and Iran worked to drive Iran and Syria together. They were joint patrons of hizbollah which, having won its unique standing in Lebanese politics by driving the Israel occupiers out of southern Lebanon in 2000, shared Syria and Iran’s opposition to Israel and its US patron. Meanwhile, the cleavage between Sunni and Shia in Lebanon was paralleled by a similar more bloody conflict in Iraq where Shia politicians friendly to Iran won governmental power at the expense of Sunnis who rebelled against the new regime. Although Shia power in Iraq was sharply constrained by the US occupation, that occupation itself was bogging the US down in a quagmire that served the interests of Iran and Syria; unable to pacify Iraq, Washington could less readily target them.

　Thus, there had arisen in opposition to the US drive for hegemony over the Middle East, as exemplified by the invasion of Iraq, a countervailing Iran-Syria-Lebanon/Hizbollah axis, to which Hamas in Palestine and anti-US elements of the Iraqi political spectrum, both Shia and Sunni, were loosely aligned. This included some Sunni insurgents but also the hizbollah-like movement of Muqtada al-Sadr. At the same time, growing regional tension between Shia Iran and Sunni US-aligned powers such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, all fearful of what seemed to be a rising Shia axis, appeared to polarize the region. While this seemed in part to be along sectarian lines, the deeper cleavage was between those who opposed US hegemony and those who accepted it.

　The struggle over the Middle East between Washington and its allies was, in part, to be played out in Lebanon, notably in the Israeli-Hizbollah war in the summer of 2006. Hizbollah provoked that war by its kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers; yet there is no doubt that Israel was waiting for an opportunity to smash hizbollah and the US backed it in the hope that this would shift the balance of power against those forces resisted its hegemony. And at first US-leaning powers Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia criticized, in an unprecedented way, an Arab force--hizbollah—-that was fighting Israel; this put them at odds with the growing popularity of the movement in region-wide opinion, because of its effective stance against the US-Israeli combinazione and they had to publicly back away from appearing to be aligned with the latter. 

　The war did not go according to Israeli plans. Hizbollah fought back fiercely and inflicted losses on Israel which could not destroy it. What Israel did do was use aerial bombing to destroy much of Lebanon's infrastructure and systematically pulverize Shia towns, villages and neighborhoods in order to decimate Hezbollah’s power base and turn all Lebanese against hizbollah. The war had, however, an ambiguous impact on Lebanese politics. The 14 March group dominating the Lebanese government was very ambivalent. It blamed hizbollah for usurping the power of government to involve Lebanon in a war it did not want. While it may have secretly welcomed the Israel attack on hizbollah as doing what it lacked the power to do, Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon forced all Lebanese to close ranks against it. The US failure to protect Lebanon from Israel enabled Syria and its Lebanese allies to argue that alignment with the US did not serve Lebanon. Not having been defeated by Israel, hizbollah successfully portrayed the war as a victory and its prestige soared across the Arab and Islamic world, although perhaps less so in Lebanon which had experienced the costs of this “victory.”  But generally Hizbollah won wide credit and its  Shia base, in particular, closed ranks behind the movement, especially as it was quick to begin reconstruction of damaged Shia communities. "With Hezbollah’s sudden increased popularity, its Syrian patron further stood to benefit.[2]

　Since the war ended in a military stalemate, the actual winners and losers would be determined by the political struggle in its aftermath. While Israel and the Sinora government might have both hoped to use the UN multinational forces deployed in Lebanon under the ceasefire to disarm hizbollah, it was soon clear this was not in the cards. The original American plan to place international troops on the Syria-Lebanese border to isolate Syria has also not been realized. However, the deployment of a strengthened UNIFIL and 15,000 Lebanese troops south of the Litani River after the war seemed to mean hizbollah had lost its previous autonomy; it would not be able henceforth to engage Israel across Lebanon's southern border in pursuit of its own agenda or that of Syria and Iran, e.g. in support of the embattled Palestinians. The intricate network of bunkers, tunnels, and arms depots that Hezbollah installed there were abandoned, although many of its fighters are still there, because they live in the area. Hizbollah may be setting up a new underground line of defense north of the Litani River, is probably replenishing its arsenal of rockets and anti-tank missiles and has been compensated for wartime loses by substantial Iranian financial aid. [3]

　What the war certainly did was destabilize the brief truce among the rival Lebanese sides reached in the period after Syrian withdrawal and make Lebanese domestic politics the arena for deciding the war's ultimate winners and losers. Hezbollah immediately sought to translate the credit it had won on the battlefield into the political influence that would enable it to restore governance by consensus. The context for this was the precise distribution of power among Lebanon's communities and top political offices. The ruling March 14 coalition enjoyed a majority in parliament and the Sinora government seemed bent on unilaterally pushing through its preferences on the basis of majority rule. However, under the Constitution, the president (who must sign all legislation) and the speaker (who has some control over when government proposals go to parliament) have delaying powers which they have been using. Moreover, since the cabinet cannot act without a quorum (2/3 of the ministers must be present), Hizbollah and its allies called for formation of an expanded new national unity government in which they would have a “blocking veto” over policy (1/3 plus one of the ministers could prevent a quorum).[4] When the 14 March coalition and the Sinora government refused, Hezbollah, allied with maverick Christian politician, General Michel Aoun, demanded new elections which they expected would reflect the new balance of Lebanese sentiment in their favour. Their case is that only a new national unity government could heal the sectarian divide, prevent a lurch back into civil war and rebuild Lebanon after Israel’s devastating assault. Laying down the gauntlet to the Sinora government, Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared, "We will take all necessary steps to force the government to resign and form a temporary…government to supervise the elections." Another critical issue in this struggle was the looming Presidential election in which the pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud would give up office to a new Maronite incumbent; under the current parliament, which elects the president, this would be an anti-Syrian candidate but new elections could change that. Hezbollah’s influence in the Lebanese system would be even more threatened if its opponents gained the presidency without it securing a blocking vote in government.

　Behind this power struggle were burning issues of Lebanon's foreign policy. In the current crisis the fragile, post-civil war consensus has broken down, with each side seeing the other as un-patriotic; Hizbollah sees the March 14 coalition as collaborating with US imperialism while the latter see Hizbollah as a tool of Syria and Iran. The 14 March coalition seems determined to push ahead, under US protection, on its anti-Syrian tangent, notably to approve international plans for the tribunal to examine the Hariri murder; but this could be blocked by Syria’s allies if the system of consensual governance prevails, and in the meantime, they are using their delaying powers as well as contesting the legitimacy of a government bent on governing by majority rule. According to its opponents, hizbollah’s reach for a “blocking veto” was to protect Syria from the tribunal; or sought on behalf of Iran, which sought to send the message that it could block US hegemony in Lebanon as it was doing in Iraq and hence that it was a pivotal power the US had to accommodate. 

　It is at this juncture that the assassination of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel in Beirut on 21 November took place. According to veteran Middle East analyst, Patrick Seale,[5] there are two main theories about who killed Gemayel. One sees Syria as the likely culprit. Gemayel was a member of a prominent Maronite family which for decades had championed a Christian-centric version of Lebanese nationalism. His uncle Bashir had collaborated with Israel in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon and was elected president, only to be assassinated by a member of a pan-Syrian party. Bashir’s brother Amin succeeded him as president and, with American backing, concluded a separate peace with Israel in May 1983, which would have put his country into Israel’s orbit. Syria mobilized its local allies against the accord and managed to abort it. True to his family’s heritage, Amin’s son, Pierre Gemayel was a minister in Fuad Sinora’s anti-Syrian government. This view also claims that the explosive issue of Syrian involvement in the killing of Rafiq al-Hariri was coming to a head as the Brammerz commission of inquiry was expected to publish findings fingering Damascus and, hence, the killing was a pre-emptive move to bring down the Sinora government that would have to approve a UN tribunal trying those accused.

　The opposite theory that Syria’s enemies were responsible is based on the fact that Syria and its allies have been the immediate losers from the killing. As Lebanese analyst Paul Salem observed,[6] it could not have been timed more effectively to hurt Syria's interests. Carried out on the day that the UN Security Council was meeting to consider the tribunal, it helped get agreement on it in the Security Council. Moreover, just as Hezbollah was hoping to reap political rewards from its stalwart resistance to Israel, the murder threw it on the defensive and gave a boost to the flagging popularity of the March 14 coalition. Instead of Hezbollah demonstrations aiming at bringing down the government, a mass funeral with a strong anti-Syrian tenor filled the streets of Beirut. In this context, the vote in the Lebanese cabinet on the draft law to establish the tribunal drew close, five Shiite ministers walked out in an effort to strip the government of its legitimacy to decide on it. However, the government defied Hezbollah and approved the tribunal. Hezbollah and its allies called the move unconstitutional and mobilized to prevent its approval by parliament and to try to bring down the government.[7]

　At the international level, as Patrick Seale wrote, "the accusation of a new heinous murder comes just at a time when Syria was on the point of re-engaging with Europe and the United States.” The European Union had revived the idea of an economic association agreement with Syria and the US Baker Commission on the Iraq war had recommended the US engage with Syria and Iran. It occurred just as Syria had renewed diplomatic relations with Iraq and after Iran called for a summit of neighbouring states to end the violence there, moves which Seale takes to be signals that both states were ready to play a constructive role and help the US find an honourable exit from the Iraqi quagmire, provided Washington acknowledged their own vital interests. Salem argues that Iran was seeking assurances that the US would not attack it and that its role in the region would be recognized; in exchange, it would cooperate in stabilizing Iraq and Lebanon. Syria sought assurances that the the US would not use the UN tribunal as a cover for regime change. It also wants the return of the Israel-occupied Golan Heights. In these circumstances, writes Seale, “it seems hardly likely that Syria would put all this in jeopardy by ordering a squalid murder of a relatively unimportant Lebanese politician.” On the other hand, “Syria’s enemies – Israel and its Lebanese agents first among them – would have every motive to seek to check Syria’s return to international respectability and to prevent the restoration of Syrian influence in Lebanon.

　At the time of this writing the power struggle continues in Lebanon. Hezbollah and its allies have mounted massive demonstrations to force the resignation of the Sinora government, but it, backed by the West and Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, has refused. Hizbollah cannot readily back down, but its only alternative is to ratchet up the level of civil disobedience and attempt to paralyze the Sinora government.