Not for the first time, the internal conflict in one small Middle Eastern country has come to symbolise the much wider struggle over the balance of power in the region. This month’s confrontation in Lebanon was ostensibly between a weak government, led by a Sunni prime minister, and a powerful opposition led by the Shi’ite movement Hizbullah. In this sense, the conflict was the latest episode in the perennial problem of how Lebanon’s very diverse communities (there are eighteen officially-recognised religious sects in a country smaller than Connecticut) should share power.
But difficult, indeed intractable, as Lebanon’s internal difficulties may be, they are severely complicated by the involvement of outside powers. Behind the government of Fuad Siniora stand the United States, France, Saudi Arabia and Egypt; behind Hizbullah stand Iran and Syria. The internal war is also a proxy war waged between pro-Western and anti-Western forces in the region.
In the latest battle in this ongoing war, Hizbullah has emerged stronger – albeit at the cost of alienating many Lebanese (and other Arabs) by what is viewed as its aggressive behaviour. By bringing its forces onto the streets of Beirut, and briefly controlling parts of the capital, Hizbullah was seen to be crossing a red line. Its claim to the right to bear arms is based on its role in confronting Israel; to use its considerable military power in an internal political struggle is widely seen as unforgivable. But its success was undeniable. Intensive Arab mediation produced an agreement which gave it what it has long wanted: a veto power over government decisions.
What are the wider implications of this episode? It reinforces the impression that President Bush’s friends in the region (King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President Mubarak in Egypt, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, no less than Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora) are on the defensive, while Iran’s friends are far from being defeated. Syria is in a much stronger position than it was only three years ago, when it was forced into a humiliating military withdrawal from Lebanon. To be sure, Syria and Hizbullah do not enjoy unchallenged hegemony in Lebanon – but they are strong players, with the power to block any unwelcome steps the new government in Beirut may contemplate. Elsewhere in the region another ally of Iran, Hamas, may be cooped up in Gaza, but persistent efforts to marginalise it have failed. As for Iraq – still the dominant issue in regional affairs – Iran has skilfully used the full panoply of its “soft power” to increase its influence there, even as the Americans struggle to turn their “hard power” into tangible and lasting gains.
This is the complex, unhappy and unstable regional picture which the next occupant of the White House will have to grapple with.
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