June 16, 2013
Former
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s broadside of sharp accusations against
Hezbollah a few days ago is symptomatic of the entire Lebanese political scene
and system—spirited, adversarial, apocalyptic, mostly accurate in its
accusations, dire in its predictions, but probably insignificant in its
practical, immediate consequences. This is because two weeks ago, Hezbollah
leader Hassan Nasrallah for his part made similar attacks against many (mostly
Sunni) Salafist groups, the United States, Israel, conservative Arab regimes in
the Gulf and others that he sees as in the same camp as Hariri’s March 14
alliance. He, like Hariri, accused his foes of equally evil deeds and
treacherous intentions, whose consequences spell the ruin of the Arab world as
we know it.
These
intriguing figures, Hariri and Nasrallah—one in exile the other in hiding for
the last six years—regularly issue their fire and brimstone-style warnings,
threats, admonitions, offers and promises via the global digital media. Their
chronically worried constituencies wonder every day if Lebanon will suffer
another devastating war in the coming weeks or months, but they have no say in
the decisions that determine war or peace. Both leaders’ words should be heeded
carefully, because they have emerged as the spokesmen for the two major
ideological camps of people across the Arab Middle East, plus much of Iran and
Turkey in many ways, that are now deeply locked in an open war for the identity
and control of state policies of around 500 million people in this region.
The
fact that they both must remain in hiding and cannot openly take a stroll among
their compatriots in their lovely capital city, Beirut, reflects at one level
the seriousness and dangers of this war. They both fear being assassinated, and
for good reason: Several of their predecessors and warriors in arms in fact
have been assassinated in recent years. This also mirrors the intensity and the
stakes of the war, which both sides see as a zero-sum contest in which one side
will win and the other will disappear from history.
My
guess is that neither Hariri nor Nasrallah fully captures the sentiments of the
majority. Both their worldviews, values and lifestyles offer some appealing
elements to Arab and other Middle Eastern nationals; but neither of them offers
a social, nationalist and economic package that the majority of Middle
Easterners would comfortably adopt.
Nasrallah
and Hezbollah, with their Syrian and Iranian strategic/structural allies, offer
resistance, respect, discipline, efficiency, liberation, deterrence, self-reliance
and effective social services delivery systems that appeal to many; but they
also represent to many others the promise only of perpetual warfare, recklessly
determined unilaterally, along with the repulsive examples of
Iranian-Syrian-style autocratic governance, bundled in an unspoken Shiite
sectarian cloak. Many Lebanese deeply resent Hezbollah’s status as a heavily
armed organization beyond the control of the state, and running its own foreign
and war policies while disregarding the consequences for the rest of the
country. There is much to love and fear about Hezbollah and its promises,
depending on your vantage point in Lebanon and the region.
On
the other hand, Hariri’s world is equally complex and paradoxical, at one
enticing and frightening. With its rich tapestry of capitalism and pluralism,
and national values captured symbolically in the spectacles of the Saudi and
American worlds, Hariri’s ways offer materialistic allures that are blunted by
the deep costs of social and class cleavages, where markets rule and
governments cannot intermediate to plug the gaps in very basic needs—food,
shelter, jobs, electricity, to start with—that plague perhaps hundreds of
millions of people. Those who fear the Hariri promise do so in part also
because they distrust governance that coddles and sometimes relies on
fundamentalist Sunni-Wahhabi values as its foundation. They fear the Salafist
wave that haunts them as much as Hariri’s compatriots fear the Shiite-Iranian
wave that they see steadily approaching from the east.
Hariri
and Nasrallah and their respective March 14 and March 8 movements—and their
wider supporters, allies, funders, apologists and armorers abroad—represent
both the vitality and the dysfunction of the Lebanese political governance
system that has allowed itself repeatedly to become the main proxy gladiators'
arena for Middle Eastern and global powers. Lebanon offers many legitimate and
available arenas where sensible politicians could negotiate durable
power-sharing agreements that would allow Lebanon to achieve the full promise
of its talented people, impressive culture, and strategic location. These
include the parliament, the cabinet, the “three presidents”, and the National
Dialogue. Yet these are used lightly and only occasionally.
So
ideological divides in Lebanon and Middle East continue to widen and deepen,
and move into the realm of armed combat, ethnic cleansing, and apocalyptic
warnings about neighbors and foes that represent the devil’s ways. These
warnings are issued by charismatic, powerful men in hiding, who mirror a modern
Arab political culture that remains confounded by both its own bizarreness and
its capacity for violence and self-destruction.
Rami
G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American
University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2013 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by
Agence Global