BEIRUT — The rapid-fire succession of political events in Lebanon and Syria in the past week, coupled with continued international pressure on the two countries, seems to have brought Lebanon back to its messy status from the 1950s to the 1980s, as the surrogate political field of battle for competing local, regional and international forces. Thursday’s formal designation of Omar Karami to form a new Lebanese government of “national unity” marks the unofficial start of the next and probably difficult phase of the current political battle between Lebanese opposition forces and the Syrian and Lebanese governments and their supporters.
Conditions in Lebanon today are very different from what they were in the 1970s, however, and the odds are heavy that the contestation to come will remain in the political arena, without much chance of the country slipping back into war, or surrogate thuggery and warlordism, on behalf of foreign and regional patrons.
The principal actors have evolved somewhat — Palestinians, Israelis, and Russians play only an indirect role today, while Iran, Europeans, Arab Islamist militants, and the UN are more closely involved. The global context also has changed radically, with the end of the cold war, the rise of Islamist militancy, and the advent of Washington’s post 9/11 global preemptive war strategy. Yet the dynamics remain constant: Lebanese national parties, political forces, and religious/ethnic groups, anchored in region-, town- and even neighborhood-level territoriality, act as surrogates for other powers in the Middle East or abroad.
This peculiarly Lebanese phenomenon of national politics that are at once very local and global is a blend of provincialism and cosmopolitanism that has recurrently plagued modern Lebanon (and other Arab lands) since the invention of the modern Middle East state system by European statehood craftsmen in the 1920s.
Thus what appears on the surface to be a slightly beleaguered and isolated Lebanese president designating a partially discredited politician to engage the newly expanded Lebanese opposition forces to form a Lebanese government of national unity is in fact the fulcrum and foundational layer of overlapping multiple interests and ideological strategies that ripple throughout the Middle East and the world.
At least five issues are at play here.
The first is the purely Lebanese-Syrian relationship, whose natural fraternity and structurally intertwined interests have been badly frayed by the three decades of Syrian dominance of Lebanon. The Syrian-engineered extension of President Emile Lahoud’s term last September was simply too much for many Lebanese, and pushed members of the opposition to more explicitly criticize Syria’s military and security presence in Lebanon. Five months later, the spontaneous anti-Syrian protests after Rafik Hariri’s murder were a powerful, natural expression of a Lebanese will to regain control of its own destiny, expressed mainly by two critical demographic groups: young Lebanese under the age of 30 who have lived their entire lives under Syria’s shadow, and older Lebanese aged 50 and over, who feel that their sense and experience of adulthood have been demeaned by their generation-long subservience to Damascus.
The second issue at play is the American-Syrian confrontation over Syria’s role in Lebanon, which gave rise to UN Security Council resolution 1559 last September. This confrontation was triggered largely by Washington’s urgent desire to elicit greater Syrian cooperation on Iraq (a legitimate American strategic concern) and Palestine (a legitimate Israeli strategic concern). After the Lahoud term extension and the response to the Hariri murder, the U.S., France and others intensified their determination to see Syria out of Lebanon. The internationalization of players involved in Lebanese politics is also reflected in the Lebanese opposition’s tour of Europe this week, alongside the UN’s Resolution 1559 and the U.S. Congress’ Syrian Accountability and Lebanon Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003.
The third issue is Hizbullah, in Lebanon and regionally. The United States, Israel and just a few other countries have labeled Hizbullah a terrorist organization, and Washington included in resolution 1559 a requirement to disarm all Lebanese militias, referring clearly to Hizbullah. Also, Hizbullah is deeply associated with and supported by Syria and Iran, and it derives much of its legitimacy and popular support for challenging Israel, especially for working to liberate occupied south Lebanon from Israeli control by mid-2000. An important part of the current political debate in Lebanon will be about Hizbullah’s future role in Lebanese national politics, and whether or not it retains its arms and offers “resistance” to Israeli threats or occupation. The European Parliament’s designation of Hizbullah Thursday as a “terrorist” group, while most European governments have not made that determination, reflects the increasingly global nature of this political dispute over Hizbullah.
The fourth issue is the Arab-Palestinian and wider Arab-Israeli conflict and the respective roles of the U.S., Syria and Hizbullah in supporting either side. Pressuring Syria and Iran, and emasculating the respective impact of Damascus, Tehran and Hizbullah, in the wake of the regime change in Iraq, would radically transform the power equation in the Middle East, allowing Israel and the U.S. to impose their will on weaker, dependent Arab states. Defeating Syria and its friends in Lebanon is a crucial test case for this scenario.
The fifth issue is the wider global “war on terror,” with Washington viewing Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and several Syrian-backed Palestinian groups as practitioners or supporters of terrorism. Cutting off such alleged support for terror, along with stopping the development of Syrian and Iranian capabilities to develop weapons of mass destruction, are key medium-term U.S. goals that would be enhanced if Hizbullah and other pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian groups are thwarted politically in Lebanon. President Bush now touts Lebanon’s freedom from Syrian control as critical to Washington’s expanding global strategy of promoting freedom and democracy, in some parts of the world, at least.
Within this context, Lebanon has emerged again as the surrogate battleground where opposing local forces engage one another through peaceful political protest, often on behalf of foreign parties and goals. This time, though, as opposed to decades past, the principal Lebanese players seem to be furiously waving flags at the television cameras, rather than guns at each other. That they all wave the Lebanese flag, rather than their factional banners, is an important indicator that — to date, at least — the forces of composure, compromise and peaceful consensus-building are stronger than any inclination to fight. This is also affirmed by the repeated statements of all sides that political disputes must be resolved through peaceful and democratic means. The coming weeks will show if this is just a phase, or a deeply engrained national ethos.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
@2005 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 12 March 2005
Word Count: 1,084 words
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